Political Parties and Elections Bill

I and my noble friend Lord Rennard have added our names to Amendments 82 and 84 for a number of reasons. I shall, as briefly as possible, add to what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has already said and try to emphasise one or two additional points. First, I entirely endorse what he says about the extent of support within the House of Commons and the totally inadequate lack of attention to this issue because of the way in which the legislation was so-called "programmed". Old-fashioned politicians like me used to think of it as guillotining. The only point on which I differ from the noble Lord is that I think it was 218 members who signed the amendment; a very substantial number. To pick up on one extremely important point that the noble Lord made towards the end of his speech, all parties would benefit from this situation being sorted out. What happened in the past has gone; we have all had unfortunate experiences in this field; the sooner this issue is cleaned up and it becomes absolutely apparent to the public that it has been addressed, the better. It is not going to be retrospective, but the lessons of the past should be informing us for the future. We, too, believe that it is a matter of principle that those whose commitment to the United Kingdom stops short of making a substantial contribution to its economy through their tax should not be put in a privileged position. It is surely the greatest irony that you can save a bit of money by being a tax exile, and then you can use it to invest in the United Kingdom political parties to try to reduce the tax burden, perhaps, on non-doms. It is extremely important that we find ways to deal with this issue. To me, tax is the rent we pay to live in a civilised society. It is part of being a citizen of the United Kingdom or any other democracy. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, referred to the Rowntree report. I do not intend to follow him in detail, but I drew that report to the attention of the House in a Question some months ago. We are still awaiting a considered response from the Government to that extremely important report, which raised very substantial issues about the way in which the political system is seen and the extent to which individuals in our society feel disenchanted and disengaged from the political system, because of the power of money—not least in terms of the power of foreign money. The noble Lord referred to the views of the Electoral Commission and I take seriously the fact that it recognises the purpose of what we are seeking to achieve, but has some concerns about its application. It is clearly a problem that it is impossible for any regulatory body to take a retrospective view of. Were they a tax exile last year or are they a tax exile this year? However, ways can be found around that. If there is a practical way, as the noble Lord said, for the Appointments Commission to look at this issue in relation to nominations to this House, and if that is seen to be a perfectly legal, unchallengeable way to assess the tax status of an individual, why, for goodness’ sake can that not be used in the same way? There are two subsidiary issues to which the noble Lord has not referred. As he pointed out, small donations might well fall outside this particular restriction, for reasons that we all understand. However, as I understand it from the briefing that was repeated to me from the Electoral Commission, which I received before Second Reading, if each individual donation is £1 less than the threshold, and the donation is made at that level every week of the year and goes, in aggregate, way over the top of the threshold, it would not be caught in terms of reporting and checking the origin of those donations. That cannot be right. I had hoped that having raised this at Second Reading the Minister and his team would have found a way of closing what is, at least apparently, a loophole. If it is an apparent loophole for the Electoral Commission, it must surely be one that we should take very seriously, because it would be crazy if the aggregate donation over the full 365 days of the year turned out to be dramatically more than Parliament and government intend in terms of the threshold. I hope that the noble Lord can respond to that in particular. As I have said, I raised that at Second Reading; I did not receive an answer then and I was hopeful that we would have received a substantial amendment to deal with it now. On the other question to which I should like to draw attention, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, mentioned the question of companies that might be in the control of an otherwise impermissible donor. The answer to that is of course in Amendment 89, to which he may care to add his name, in the name of my noble friend Lord Rennard and myself, and in Amendment 90. Both amendments deal with this issue. We will come to them in due course, but it is not impossible to deal with that perfectly justified point. We do not want a way whereby particular donors are excluded as individuals, but they find a route round that simply by having a company which enables them to make donations in a way that would be illegitimate in terms of the amendment and, I hope, the eventual legislation that we pass. We have a great deal of sympathy with the points that have been raised, not just by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, but by a huge number of others outwith politics. These are not just political animals saying that this system is being cheated, it is of a real concern to the interested public, and that was very apparent from the Rowntree report. We hope that the Minister, even if he cannot do so today, will recognise the strength of feeling among Members of both Houses—and rightly so, because the present situation is not sustainable, and the public knows it is not sustainable. The public believes that it is yet one more reason why we have what is now being referred to as a reputational crisis in Parliament.