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Political Parties and Elections Bill

I thank the noble Lord for his intervention, but it does not influence my thinking. The noble Lord’s first example was of the Conservative Government on unemployment. It is not for me to argue the case for the Conservatives when they were in government, but I would have thought that anything that helped to reduce unemployment was well worth doing. As for the political parties being able to take that space, we obviously have three party political broadcasts that other political parties can use. That is not only at election times, but at other times too, so there are other avenues for free broadcasting by the political parties. On the trade unions, I start, with great respect, with a quote from the Neill Committee on Standards in Public Life in 1998, which said: ""No change should be made in the law relating to trade unions and their political funds"." That was sound. However, I accept that there still might need to be some tightening up of procedure. The trade unions have accepted that. They are prepared to look at their own situation, such as full affiliation of the levy-paying membership and how that affects things, and see if they cannot look at doing that. I must make the trade unions’ position clear because an awful lot of false information is given. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, referred to possible breaches of the position. However, between 2000 and 2006 the certification officer received only three complaints regarding political funds; two were withdrawn and one was not upheld. Certainly, no complaints have been justified. The 10-yearly ballots of trade union members show continuing support for trade unions having political funds; I declare an interest, as I was the officer responsible at the time and worked to implement those 10-yearly ballots,. We must be clear that there is absolute transparency in trade union funding. Through the Electoral Commission, any member of the public can look and see how much an affiliated trade union gives to the Labour Party. They can see those political funds’ income and expenditure from the certification officer’s annual report, and the numbers of those who pay in and opt out. As I probably said many years ago, that can be compared with some companies and unincorporated associations, where the public cannot even know the names of the individuals behind the donations. As I said at the beginning, the trade unions’ political activities are more tightly regulated than those of any other organisation. To argue that something is not quite right in the receipt and expenditure of trade union funding is completely wrong. These two things go together. Putting a cap on donations at this point would be wrong if we are to look at the question of public funding, which has not been responded to and no doubt will be: how much public funding might be necessary to ensure that the democratic process works well? Now is certainly not the moment for us to talk about public funding. We have had that debate for the past 30 years. There has been a gradual increase in public funding, and we have reached the point at which we should not put any more into the electoral procedure. As has been proved by all the debates and the lack of consensus, this is a much bigger debate than the amendments suggest. Putting them in the Bill will not satisfy that debate at all.