Trade Union Bill

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Lords Chamber

There is clearly a fundamental difference of opinion between the Government and us. We are never going to deal with that by seeing who can shout the loudest, and we should not try to. Surely it makes sense to take a step back and ensure a separate, careful, civilised, evidence-based consideration of just those two clauses by a Select Committee of your Lordships’ House. I hope that my explanation has clarified the purpose, objective, wisdom and reasonableness of our Motion. I beg to move.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, I shall try to be reasonably brief because, as the noble Baroness said, I referred to a number of these issues at Second Reading last week.

Since then, I have been struck by the number of Members on the Cross Benches and the Conservative Benches who have agreed that this is the right time to look at the wider issue of party funding. Indeed, it is probably the only opportunity that we will get in this Parliament. I therefore very much welcome the initiative by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, to bring the idea back before the House this afternoon in prime time, and I hope that we will be successful today.

The Trade Union Bill before the House is deliberately very tightly drawn. The Minister told us repeatedly at Second Reading that it is not about party funding and, as the noble Baroness said, we have all received a letter from her which makes that point yet again. However, I refer the House to the Conservative Party manifesto which contained a two-part promise not only to make this change in this Bill but to reinitiate cross-party discussions about party funding, so this is part of the general package to which the manifesto referred. By making a tight Long Title to the Bill, without even the usual provision of “connected purposes”, the Government are able to advance changes to the way in which individuals contribute to the Labour Party through union political funds and ward off any amendments to the Bill about the way in which such provisions might apply to other parties and other action on the issue.

Most of the big money goes to the Conservative Party. It took 59% of all party-political donations by individuals in the 12 months leading up to the previous election. Even once trade union donations are taken into account, the Conservatives attracted £2 in every £5 donated to all political parties put together. We now know that the cash was spent—in avalanches—in target seats, in marginal constituencies, in the 2015 general election. Jim Messina, the Conservatives’ election adviser from the US, told the Spectator just a few days ago that he thinks the party spent £30 million in the run-up to the poll last year. I suspect that the Conservative treasurer may have recalculated that in the final returns to the Electoral Commission, since the legal limit is £19 million.

As it happens, quite coincidentally, the figures are out today from the Electoral Commission, and they repay very careful analysis. Michael Crick of BBC2, who I think is acknowledged to be an expert in these matters, comments:

“those are the OFFICIAL national party spending figures. I don’t believe them”.

Nor do I. They do not include Conservative candidates’ own expenditure. He then highlights “unsolicited material to voters” costing £4 million. As a recipient in a target marginal seat, I can confirm that, yes, we were all receiving unsolicited mail of that nature. And then it is identified in the Electoral Commission figures published today that £2.4 million was paid to Mr—as he was then—Lynton Crosby, and £369,000 was paid to that very same Jim Messina. Presumably, his opinion on the amount that has been spent by the party is worth paying for.

Having deployed those funds to win a narrow majority in the other place, the Government are now plainly set on redefining the rules of the political game to entrench their own power, perhaps permanently. The Bill must be set against the overall picture of changes secured by Conservatives in the past few months and years. There were arguments over boundary changes. We then saw in the House at the end of last year Ministers nipping through provisions to wipe nearly 2 million people off the electoral register just in time for the boundary-change calculations. We saw last week how the Government are now challenging, with as yet no parliamentary process, even the power of your Lordships’ House. Now with this measure, presented as a technical change to make union members’ donations to political funds more transparent, we have an extraordinary attempt to fully stymie an already hobbled Opposition.

It is extraordinary that we need this Motion, but it is absolutely right to refer us back to the recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which examined in detail a whole suite of issues on party funding five years ago. Its work built on that of Sir Hayden Phillips in the review that was commissioned by the then Labour Government. Sadly, no progress was made following the Phillips report because no consensus could be reached on the twin matters of altering principally Conservative funding by way of individual donations on the one hand and altering principally Labour funding by way of restrictions on the way in which trade union political funds work on the other.

We have now an opportunity to look again at a comprehensive package, balanced to affect the major parties in roughly equal measure. The CSPL arrived at such a package in 2011, and that should have been implemented by the coalition Government. It is one of my biggest regrets that no progress was made and the nettle was not grasped then in a fair and equitable way. We cannot turn the clock back, but what we can and should make progress on now, in the first year of this Parliament, is a fundamental package of party- funding reform. It was promised in the Conservative manifesto as well as in those of Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

As the noble Baroness has made clear, a Select Committee of your Lordships’ House seems to be an ideal catalyst for implementing those commitments, and of course it could make very good use of the evidence that the CSPL amassed. Last week the noble Lord, Lord Bew, who chairs the CSPL, made it clear that there is still some work to do in updating the calculations and judgments that his committee made in 2011, and surely a Select Committee is the most effective way to do that. His contribution to the debate last week and that of the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, are essential reading, particularly perhaps for their colleagues on the Cross Benches, because they were particularly significant.

The Select Committee could look carefully at the partisan effects of the Trade Union Bill and could make recommendations for progress on balancing the provision of a donation cap. It could also review fully, in the light of Electoral Commission evidence, the operation of the current law on constituency spending. As my noble friend Lord Rennard pointed out last week, the spirit of the law on constituency spending limits is being abused—no doubt by all parties—even if its letter is still observed.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

Does the noble Lord not think that his credibility in arguing for fairness and balance and non-partisan behaviour in respect of constituencies would be greatly enhanced if the Liberals had not voted to prevent the boundary changes going through in time for the general election?

[Lord Tyler]

It is quite irrelevant. What is absolutely clear—and I think I will have the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, with me on this—is that all parties now do not respect the constituency limits that he and I had to observe years ago when we stood as candidates. We were told, were we not, by our lawyers and our agents, that were we to spend one penny over the limit for a constituency, we would be in trouble. Indeed, last year all parties swamped marginal, targeted constituencies with money from outside which, as long as it did not mention the name of the candidate, was completely outwith the constituency limits. I think the noble Lord and I would agree that what was set in motion by the 1883 Act, which limited how you could buy a constituency, is now not worth the paper it is written on. We need to look at that again, and it is important that it should be effectively considered by a good cross-party Select Committee of your Lordships’ House.

Spending on material of that nature hugely exceeds the constituency limits, and it is clear from the figures published today that the Conservative Party, and no doubt the other parties, made huge use of that just last year. Voters do not get to vote nationally in our system. Every voter in a constituency votes for their own constituency MP, and therefore material distributed in those constituencies by parties contesting the election is just constituency campaigning. The law needs to reflect that point.

The Motion today sets out an ambitious timetable for the committee, seeking a report by 29 February. I support that, because foot-dragging is the enemy of progress in this issue, perhaps more than any other. No sooner are proposals produced than people start saying, “It’s too close to the next election to do anything”, so it is urgent that this issue is looked at now. The committee might choose to make a first report by 29 February, which could then of course be seen in the light of progress with the Trade Union Bill through your Lordships’ House. This timetable, however, must enable it to work constructively and fully with the Committee on Standards in Public Life to bring forward renewed proposals for comprehensive reform.

If anyone still doubts that the clauses in the Trade Union Bill will entrench the invidious iniquity in the UK’s party funding arrangements or that there is a dangerous arms race in spending, they need only consult the figures the Electoral Commission has published today, which speak eloquently to both. Ministerial claims in the debates hitherto and in the letter sent to us that the Bill may not adversely affect Labour’s income are either charmingly naive or stark-staring mendacious. Perhaps they think we are naive. Either way, balancing provisions for the rest of party funding are urgently needed, so my noble friends and I will strongly support this Motion in the Lobbies this afternoon.