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Political Parties and Elections Bill

I endorse the amendment, to which I have put my name. I am slightly disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, thinks that this is the right thing to do but not now. We want to get more people involved in our political process now. There is a crisis of confidence, which is partly related to the economic crisis: people do not see the political parties and Parliament as representing them. The case has increased since 10 years ago, when the Committee on Standards in Public Life so strongly put the argument to which the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor spoke. Given that we seem unable to reach another way to help the individual citizen to be more directly involved, and seeing that they are involved—at a modest level in terms of contribution—in the political process, it would be pity to put this into cold storage for "better times". Better times may not come for some time. I confess that I was attracted by the idea of the Power commission, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, that electors could in some way or other indicate which party they thought should receive a limited part of the available state funding when they went to the polling station. Frankly, that is a long way off; we will not be able to get it. This, however, is an intensely practical, simple solution. A huge number of people already adopt a similar provision for charity contributions. I see no reason why taking an active interest in how your country is run should somehow be demeaned as less important than contributing to a charity.