Democratic Political Activity (Funding and Expenditure) Bill [HL]

Lord True Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 27th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, here we are again: the same magnificent Victorian theatre; the same Bill, in effect, as I shall show; and the same dramatis personae, with the welcome addition of the right reverend Prelate and sadly, I agree entirely, the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Bew. I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said about that, but that is about as far as I will go with the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. He ended, as Liberal Democrats so often do, with a call for consensus. But the preceding 15 minutes of his speech were partisan and often acid. Indeed, he repeated allegations which he made in March in relation to incidents which have been investigated by the legal authorities, and in respect of which no charges have been made—with no apology whatever.

I note 15 Members present on the Liberal Democrat Benches for this debate. In the previous debate, introduced by my noble friend Lord Holmes on the incredibly important issue of the scandal of the abuse of young people through unpaid internships, the Liberal Democrats could not even put up a Front-Bench spokesman on that matter. But they flock in—15 of them—for this debate. I wonder whether there is a political interest at stake here. Of course I welcome some of them, and it is particularly good to see the noble Lord, Lord Wrigglesworth, here again. In the proceedings on 10 March, which I too have read, he declared at col. 1608 that he and Ms Sarah Olney would, as he put it, “see” me “at the ballot box” in Richmond in May. Well, he and Ms Olney did come—I saw them—and Zac Goldsmith defeated them. It is great to have my honourable friend back in Parliament.

I have carefully examined the Bill and compared it with the Bill we discussed only a few months ago. There is an extra word in the Short Title—it is “Democratic Political Activity” rather than “Political Parties”. It has Latin numerals instead of Arabic ones for reference to parts of the 2000 Act—a change which, as a classicist, I cannot but welcome and think is correct, although I note one has been missed, on page 3, line 27. Dates are updated by a year to set them in the future, which is wise, and a useful explanatory parenthesis relating to your Lordships has been added to Clause 11(4)(c).

There is minor redrafting in Clause 12, relating to gift aid—a proposal I actually support. Last Session’s new condition G in Section 416 of the Income Tax Act 2007 has now become condition H. No doubt the noble Lord will explain in Committee if there is any significance in that. Another change is that the provision in Clause 17 of last year’s Bill requiring a valid candidate for European elections to have 1,000 signatures in his or her support is omitted. Is the noble Lord anticipating Brexit and not wasting time on reform of European elections? Or is it perhaps that the previous version was written before his party’s campaign for a second referendum—which the noble Lord called for again today—tanked and the party lost vote share in this year’s general election?

The very few narrow changes in Clause 20, relating to candidate expenditure, to which the noble Lord spoke, and the changes in Clause 19 relating to control of non-election expenses, reducing the limit further, present severe difficulties. They are technical, controversial and not so far the subject of consensus. I make no detailed comment, as this is outside my skill base, but I believe that assigning national expenditure to constituencies would be exceptionally difficult. Funnily enough, I instinctively welcome the idea of some limit on the tiresome bore of unsolicited digital messages based on postal codes. I am pretty sure that on this I am pretty off-message with both my Front Bench and Jeremy Corbyn’s friends in Momentum, but I will say no more in case I get an unsolicited message from Mr Jared O’Mara on the subject.

All in all, it is the same Bill as last Session, with a small addition that could have been a one-clause Bill, not a repeat of what we had before—a comprehensive attempt to rewrite the rules. I am sure that my noble friend on the Front Bench will probably say again, in my view rightly and fairly, and perhaps the noble Lord on the opposition Front Bench will agree, that these changes have to be agreed between the major parties so far as possible and made, as in the past, normally by government legislation with agreement, not a Private Member’s Bill in your Lordships’ House. Certainly any increase in taxpayer funding for political parties would be unthinkable at this or any other time, in my view. No taxpayer should have to pay more to support politicians than they do now.

Perhaps it is time to reflect on the ballot for Private Members’ Bills. This would not prevent any noble Lord bringing forward substantially the same Bill in successive Sessions, as we have here, although actually I think both Front Benches, both government and official opposition, who work so hard for us—we have two of the best of the bunch here in the shape of my noble friend Lord Young and the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy—might be spared repetitive stress syndrome on a Friday by having to deal with the same Bill after a few months. Perhaps the Procedure Committee might consider whether a second or certainly a third attempt at the same fence might not go lower in the ballot than a Bill that brought a new issue before Parliament.

I spoke on two important matters in March that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has completely ignored in his Bill. I will not repeat at length what I said; it is all in Hansard for 10 March 2017 at cols. 1602-04. I stand by every word, like he does. The issue is the inability of the Electoral Commission to order the repayment to victims of crime of political donations derived from the proceeds of crime, such as Maxwell, Asil Nadir or, more recently, the £2.5 million taken and, deplorably, kept by the Liberal Democrats from a shameless fraudster, Michael Brown, who ruined many people. All the parties that have criminal money, including my own, should repay it, but the case of the Liberal Democrats’ £2.5 million is particularly fragrant. I am sorry, I mean the opposite: flagrant. That gives me the opportunity to emphasise the point: flagrant. Shameless.

In March, my noble friend on the Front Bench encouraged me by saying this was something the Government would look at in the context of any review of Electoral Commission powers. If the noble Lord presses the Bill forward, I give notice that I will seek to amend Clause 24 to give the commission such powers and will expect the full support of the Liberal Democrats for that, with a pledge to repay the £2.5 million that Brown took. Then never again will victims of villains like Brown be turned away with impunity by a political party.

The second issue that I raised concerned a lacuna in the Representation of the People Act, which provides that a person who corruptly induces any other person to withdraw from being a candidate at an election by payment or offer of payment is committing an offence. I described the murky events surrounding the Richmond Park by-election in 2016, just before which it is admitted by the Green Party that an offer of £250,000 was made to promote a so-called progressive alliance between Greens and Liberal Democrats. In making this offer—self-evidently, given the fact that the Richmond Park by-election was impending—the willingness of the Green Party to withdraw its candidate and leave the field free for the Liberal Democrats, as indeed happened, would be a very material matter to the person or company waving this fat wad of money. If that were not obvious, a leaked email sent to a Kingston Green the day before its prospective candidate withdrew, reads,

“just reiterating that what I mentioned, about the party benefiting from us not standing, is confidential—please don’t circulate”.

That is the smoking gun that confirms that Kingston Greens were told that there was a direct connection between standing or not standing in Richmond Park against Mr Goldsmith and their party bosses having the chance of getting some dosh.

On the same day, there was a further illuminating exchange between two Greens. The first Green writes, in an email: “Do you know how much the amount is?”. “No, is it important?” “£250,000”. I will paraphrase the next bit because there is a right reverend Prelate present. “Just heard from Nick. Effing ‘ell”. It was rather more correctly expressed than that, but your Lordships know what I mean. Nick is widely believed to be Mr Nick Martin, chief executive of the Green Party, who clearly knows all that the public needs to know about the person or company involved. This attempted inducement was reported to the police, but prosecutors apparently decided that, as the prospective Green candidate had not yet been formally nominated, no offence was committed in her withdrawing. Furthermore, Section 107 of the Representation of the People Act has a lacuna, in that it applies to a person, not a party. I submit that it is a corruption of politics for big money to seek to procure the withdrawal of a candidate or of a party from a local or national election in any seat, and it is a corruption of politics for big money to seek to induce a prospective candidate not to seek adoption or be adopted. That needs to be exposed and stopped, and I hope that it will be addressed in law.

In conclusion, it is a stain on the high moral tone of the Green Party that it has not been prepared to disclose the identity of the person, company or party behind this offer. It is called an attempted offer; I say that it is really an attempted bribe. Caroline Lucas, the party leader, told the BBC in May that people in the Green Party knew who had made the offer but that she, very conveniently—this was on live television—had forgotten the name. There is no record of whether she sent a text message to Andrew Neil afterwards to tell him who it was when she remembered. Nick, Mr Nick Martin, is clearly one of those people in the Green Party who Caroline Lucas has said publicly knows the identity, and I call him out today in Parliament, in the name of the integrity and transparency of political party funding, to publish the identity of that attempted donor. As it is claimed that the donation was refused by the Green Party’s ethics committee, which we are told ensures that no donations are accepted, inter alia, from foreign sources, tobacco companies or other industries such as aviation, what could the Greens possibly have to hide? Surely it would put them in a good light if they saw this person off for good. Let Mr Martin also publish the minutes of the meeting of that ethics committee. Otherwise, I will seek to amend the Bill to enable the Electoral Commission to require him to do so.