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Political Parties and Elections Bill

One cannot help but agree with the sentiment of the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. Having been practically at the coalface as parliamentary treasurer at the previous general election, I can see their real implications. In the report of Hayden Phillips, I was the one who volunteered the £50,000 cap. Clearly we must have transparency. We cannot have individuals—or unions for that matter—or organisations buying political parties or their policies. I am a bit cautious about the comments on public trust; a lot of it is a media storm which creates the lack of public trust. Having been involved in Sir Hayden Phillips’s negotiations, the stumbling blocks were twofold. We could not get an agreement on a cap on union funding, on transparency or on an opt-out by union members from donating via the union to a political party. There is still strong evidence that pressures are brought to bear on union members not to opt out. Secondly, we could not get an agreement on the unfair advantage of sitting MPs and their spending limits. The report by Hayden Phillips, which was done with great endeavour, unfortunately disappeared. It is hard to look at the two amendments coupled together. One has to do with trade unions, how they raise their money, give it to a party and how limitations are imposed. The other is about a £50,000 cap on donations. Why does not each party impose a £50,000 cap? It may help noble Lords to know that when I was responsible for the recent mayoral election we self-imposed a £50,000 cap on donations. We also did it in the Euro elections and the local elections. By and large it was possible to run the general working expenditure of our party with a £50,000 cap on donations. In fact, it was breached twice—once when someone bid £70,000 for something in an auction, for which we were very grateful, and the second time was when we were leaderless for six months. We were desperate for money; very few people were coming forward and various candidates were dipping into the trough of our donors. It was difficult to keep the centre going. There are another two occasions when a political party cannot live within the cap. The first is capital expenditure. We moved office as a party and needed a new computer system, which would cost several million pounds. We could not say to our suppliers, "Would you mind if we drip this out for four or five years while our £50,000 donations come in to pay for the new system, the new office or for any other major capital expenditure we need?".