Political Parties and Elections Bill

This is one of those odd occasions where I was in favour of the new clause the Minister was proposing until I heard his reasons for it. I could have understood an argument that said, "These figures take no account of the rate of inflation since 2000, and there is a need to stick to round figures because people do not understand small fractions, so one may as well increase the number upwards to the next round figure and leave it at that for a long time." The figures are nine years short of where indexation would normally get us, so one could then have said, "We don't intend to change the figures for a while." That would be especially important given the fact that inflation is now very low—in fact, we are looking at deflation. Unfortunately, however, that was not the Minister's argument. He suddenly came out in favour of some form of indexation and said that the figures should be increased now and then indexed. That is going too far in the direction of reducing transparency. The Minister quite rightly said that we do not have any scientific evidence about public opinion on this matter, but I caution him against making too many assumptions about whether public opinion would find what he proposes acceptable. I would be happy for him to do some research to show me that I am wrong, but to increase the figures by 50 per cent. and also to index, is to lay ourselves open to a charge that we are going too far in one go.