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Political Parties and Elections Bill

As the noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton, is so anxious that I speak, I feel obliged to rise to my feet immediately. I thank her for anticipating what I might say. Before I make a few remarks about trade unions, I shall make a few general points about the package within these amendments, which begins with the proposal in Amendment 108 for a £50,000 cap. I will not say a great deal, because I stand by my remarks in the Political Parties Elections and Referendums Bill in 2000, when I proposed such a cap a number of times and made most of my arguments. Since that day, I very much welcome the conversion of large elements of the Conservative Party to that suggestion, and the recognition by all the major parties when they sat around with Sir Hayden Phillips to discuss this, that perhaps £50,000 was the appropriate level. Since then, I confess that there may have been a need in terms of the reputation of politics to go even further than I suggested in 2000. Things would be healthier if there were a substantially lower limit. All of us who observed and were delighted by President Obama’s victory in the States will be aware that individual contributions to his campaign were capped at a mere $2,800. With the introduction of a spending cap it is possible to have healthy and vigorous democratic debate. The principle behind that is that power should lie with the voters, not the donors. We need to hold the arms race on funding. On the two areas which the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, raised, first is the obvious implication, which I accept entirely, that if there were to be a cap on very large donations, as was recognised during the Hayden Phillips talks, there would need to be alternative funding for political parties to state their case. The principle must be that democracy does not come free, but I also accept and emphasise in relation to this overall package that there could not possibly be a case for any increase in taxation to pay for democratic political activity, nor should there be cuts in services to things like schools and hospitals. We have an element of state funding, and perhaps those who speak from the Conservative Benches might tell me whether or not they accept that Short money and the policy development fund are measures of state funding. I believe that they are and that measures such as those need to be extended, but this must be on the basis that savings need to be made elsewhere in how the Government spend our taxpayers’ money. Previously in debates on this subject I have said that there needs to be increased support to pay for democracy and I have made suggestions regarding, for example, the Government’s national advertising budget. When I first suggested that it was excessive and had risen significantly since 1997, it was some £200 million nationally. I also suggested that that budget is often targeted for more partisan purposes than is sometimes proper for government advertising. The scale of that budget has increased to something like £300 million and it would not be difficult to suggest that if the government advertising budget were reduced by only some 10 per cent, the parties could state their case, rather than allowing the Government to put forward their propaganda in a partisan way as they occasionally do with their advertising spending. That is why my case is sustainable.