Party Funding Reform

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, my voice might give out, so I will try to keep it brief. I do not have the same excuse as him, either.

Like others on the speakers list, I served on the Select Committee on the then Trade Union Bill a few months ago, under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Burns. That was in the context of a Bill to restrict activities for trade unions. It focused on the political funding for one party and from one source. The Bill intended to put restrictions on, and increase greater transparency of, that source, I think its proponents would say. Following the Select Committee, its recommendations and decisions of this House and of another place, some of those restrictions were slowed down, but nevertheless they will have a serious impact on the ability of trade unions to fund political parties, and therefore on the funding over time of the Labour Party.

I did not support the proposals in the Trade Union Bill. I do not really approve of even the revised proposals. But the important point tonight is that those changes affected one source of funding and, in effect, one political party. They had no effect on other institutions or individuals, and no effect—as it stands at the moment—on other political parties.

As I have said in the House before, in the five years up to the last election about £148 million was given in political donations by organisations as distinct from individuals. Some £65 million of that was from trade unions; therefore more than £80 million was given by other organisations. Trade unions are all required to have a separate political fund; they are all required to make a decision on that political fund and its retention every 10 years; they must all allow a member to opt out of it and, as a result of the Trade Union Act, members will eventually be allowed only to opt in. None of the other organisations, companies, trusts, friendly societies or partnerships which make the bulk of the institutional donations to parties—the great majority of which go to the Conservative Party although some of it goes to other parties, including my own—has such restrictions applied to it. There is now a requirement for listed companies to take a vote, but only once and without any separate political fund.

Although I opposed the restrictions on the trade unions, the whole experience of that Select Committee brought home to me yet again the unfairness and lack of principle underlying our rules on political funding. I think that I can speak for all members of the Select Committee, including those from the Conservative Party, in saying that we were shocked when Ministers came to tell us that absolutely nothing had been done by the Government to fulfil their election manifesto commitment to seek agreement with other parties. We noted this in paragraph 138 of our report and urged the Government to reconvene cross-party talks and seek agreement. In the months since then, nothing has happened. Like the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, I hope that the Minister will tell us tonight what is being done to address this issue.

This is not just a question of equity and balance between parties; it also relates to the health of our democracy. It is not healthy for any political party to depend on significant donations from the super-rich—and a very limited number of them. It is not healthy for a decreasing number of institutions, large corporations or private companies to provide support to political parties. I also accept that it is not healthy for a political party to depend solely or mainly on the admittedly reduced sources of funding from trade unions either.

We all know that in principle none of this is justifiable to the public or, quite often, to ourselves. We all know that we need to look at the level of political expenditure. The noble Lord, Lord Leigh, said that it is small here compared with other things, but as far as the public are concerned it is still a significant overspend, particularly in general elections. We need to look at limits on such expenditure and at enforcement of limits at both national and local level by the Electoral Commission and others.

I disagree profoundly with the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, that state funding should be excluded. We have the lowest level of state support for political parties in the whole of Europe and many other parts of the world—there is even significant state funding in the United States, even though you would think that they were awash with money in the first place. The health of and support for those other European countries’ political democracies are not diminished by a significant role for state funding in their operations. I do not want utter dependence on state funding; I hope with others for more encouragement for small donations to political parties and for a wider range of institutions to give relatively small donations. However, there is a role for state funding; it is not an entirely new principle—we have significant funding in terms of Short money and Cranborne money. We also have security subsidies for our conferences and freepost at election times; and, if one counts the BBC and the other television companies as part of the state, we have free airtime for party-political broadcasts.

So it is not a principle but, when we look at it again, the balance between state funding and the form of that political funding should be part of that review. As we said in our Select Committee report, the reality is that the public do not like the present situation. They consider it unhealthy and potentially corrupt. The prospect of state funding of political parties by the taxpayer is not particularly popular either, but in terms of balance it may well be regarded by the public as the lesser of two evils. I do not wish to see a situation where political parties are utterly dependent on the state, but I see state funding, along with limitations on the level of expenditure, as part of the package. Above all, as we said on the Trade Union Act 2016, whatever comes out of the talks that I hope that the Minister will tonight announce will be convened must be equitable between political parties, and seen to be by our electors.