Political Parties and Elections Bill

I think that they will be far more interested in what the Minister said as against what I said. It is clear that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, understands the politics of this at the other end; he has obviously been well briefed by his colleagues. The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, used the £50,000 argument without explaining how it is possible to police foreign donations if they are capped at £50,000. It is utterly impossible, unless you have policemen all over the world checking up on inter-company and inter-family relationships. The noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, presses me on Europe. I have to tell him that my interest in Europe is not as detailed as his, as we know from his weekly interventions at Question Time. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, raised an important issue: the whole question of how we legislate. He may be interested to know that this recommendation came from a report, sponsored by the IPPR, written some 16 years ago entitled Money and Votes. Among its recommendations is that donations from overseas sources should be banned with three exceptions: registered overseas votes; allocations from parliamentary groups and the European Parliament; and donations below £1,000. Therefore, there has been a longstanding argument over many years on the need for reform in this area. I turn to the comments of my noble friend Lord Bach. I noted that his brief closely followed mine—that is, the one that I received from my colleagues, which was circulated in the House of Commons. Clearly, it must have come from the Government, because even the order in which the points were raised was very similar to the order of the points in the document that I read to the Committee. On my noble friend’s point about the release of information from Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs, is he aware of the NTC project? It is referred to in the document that he was not too happy with, produced by Rowntree. He may remember the debate about two weeks ago on the Floor of the House in which he commented on his reservations about the Rowntree report. I cannot remember the name of the report but it referred to NTC projects which provide HMRC tax-credit data to local authority housing departments. Therefore, there is obviously a process whereby HMRC is able, certainly in the case of housing benefit, to provide information to departments outside HMRC. My noble friend said that the Government are continuing to reflect on these matters. In the event that this amendment were agreed in the House of Lords, they would have to reflect very fast. I understand that, if it goes back to the other House, Members will want to vote on it unless the Government come up with some alternatives, so they might want to get a move on and sort out an alternative approach, rather than put the Commons in a position where they might have to vote on the amendments that I have tabled here today.