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Communications Allowance

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that. In fact, his intervention leads me on to my next point. The right hon. Member for Streatham spoke of some £283,000 being used by his Lib Dem opponent in the past three years, but from the Electoral Commission reports, I see that only £51,594 has been registered in the past four years. The extraordinary thing is that, in the past year, the Lib Dem candidate's contribution has been £11,500, whereas the right hon. Gentleman's constituency Labour party has received £13,000 from trade unions. If we add to that another £10,000, it sounds like the incumbent has an even greater advantage than that received from his own contributions, as revealed by the Electoral Commission. I am sorry to see the right hon. Member for Streatham, for whom I have considerable respect—we have neighbouring offices—go down the route of suggesting that there ought to be public funding for party politics. That is not what I would have expected from him in his swan- song, but he might have been persuaded to do that by colleagues who hope to stick around after the general election. Given that Lord Ashcroft has been mentioned many times in the debate, I shall put his position on the record. Since my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) became leader of the Conservative party, Lord Ashcroft has personally given no money to the party. Rather, his company, Bearwood Corporate Services, has donated. The company is properly registered and trades in the UK. Last year, only 1 per cent. of the money received by the party came from Bearwood, which is less than Sir Ronald Cohen, a non-dom, alone gave the Labour party. Moreover, since my right hon. Friend became leader of the Conservative party, 5 per cent. of the total receipts are from Bearwood, and contributions to marginal seats from Bearwood amount to 10 per cent. of the total money received by those seats. For those Labour and Lib Dem Members who are arithmetically challenged, that means that 95 per cent. of party funding and 90 per cent. of marginal seat funding has come from sources other than Bearwood since 2005. Perhaps Members present should take account of what Michael Crick wrote on his blog on 24 February on the fact that Bearwood gave only £80,000 in the last quarter:""Such is the bounty from other donations, they hardly need Ashcroft's money anymore."" It is important to put the record straight on trade union contributions to Labour seats. For example, the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda) received £47,500 from trade unions in five years, and the hon. Member for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas) received £36,320 from May 2005 to March 2009. In just two donations in one month in 2006 the Labour party in Hammersmith received £25,000. It would perhaps be helpful if the Deputy Leader of the House, when she responds, talked about Lord Paul's contributions and then his elevation to the Privy Council, or Lakshmi Mittal's £4 million donation to the Labour party. And of course we must not forget the helpful letter Tony Blair sent his counterpart in Romania, Adrian Nastase, supporting a business that was not registered in the UK. There are other examples. Sir Ronald Cohen gave more than £2.5 million and, incidentally, received his knighthood in 2000. Sir Christopher Ondaatje donated £1.7 million and was knighted in 2003. Let us not forget the Lib Dems, who received donations from Michael Brown, a convicted criminal. Perhaps they conveniently overlook the fact that a US attorney is still asking for the donations to be repaid. It would be helpful if they did so. Thank you, Mr. Cook. I hope that I have put the balance right. Non-dom donors are contributing a hell of a lot more to the Labour party than they are to the Conservative party.