Political Parties (Funding and Expenditure) Bill [HL]

Lord Wrigglesworth Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 10th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wrigglesworth (LD)]

I join other noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend on introducing this very comprehensive Bill. I hope it will push forward the debates we have had in this Chamber and elsewhere on this very important topic. I was also a member of the Select Committee on Trade Union Political Funds and Political Party Funding, and the reason for that and for my interest in this is that I spent the years running up to the last election as treasurer of the Liberal Democrats, raising more than £20 million in the run-up to and during that election campaign. So I got some first-hand experience not only in the business world but in raising funds for political parties.

Before I go on to comment on the Bill and on the current state of the debate on this matter, I want to respond to the noble Lord, Lord True. He went through a series of instances and all I say to him about the Brown case and others like them—and this refers to all parties—is that, if the Bill or anything like it were on the statute book, none of those things would have happened. I spent last night with Sarah Olney, with the leader of the Liberal Democrats in Richmond and party members there, and I say to the noble Lord, in response to his comments about the Richmond local authority, well, we will see him at the ballot box next May.

The noble Lord, Lord Bew, raised some important features as well, but I think that the most important feature of the Bill is the reform of contributions. Bringing down the scale of contributions, introducing a cap so that the abuses that have taken place in the past can be avoided, would mean that trust in politicians could, I hope, be improved. I do not expect, frankly, that that is going to happen soon, because I think the party opposite will be adamantly opposed to any such reform. They clearly have a massive advantage from major donors in the funding of the Conservative Party and have had for many years. Therefore, I am not optimistic that that change will take place until another Government come into office and change it. The present Government need to remember that while they may be riding high at the moment, Governments do and will change, and circumstances may well lead to the change they do not want to see taking place at some time in the future.

The Labour Party has made major, very welcome reforms following the Collins review of political funding of the Labour Party by the trade unions. I think the changes that have taken place there have moved us in the right direction, towards individual donations, which should, in a rational world, enable the major parties to come to some agreement on how we move ahead in the future.

Another consequence of putting a cap on major payments is that it would make parties do what I think would be very good for our democracy, which President Obama demonstrated in his fundraising activities for his campaigns, and that is that it would make the parties go out to the electorate and raise funds—small donations—from many, many people. I have had to do this. It is very good for the health of democracy and for the parties that we should be forced into the position of having to go to thousands and thousands of people. If you had a cap of £10,000 you would have to do that. That would be a very good thing in our political life and parties would have to respond to a cap of that sort.

The noble Lord, Lord Bew, mentioned the changes in political campaigning. I agree with him that the speed with which campaigning methods are now progressing means that it all needs to be reviewed. The change in using social media in particular enables us to raise funds from a very substantial number of people, and day by day we see all sorts of examples of this happening. There is crowdfunding of all sorts of very good causes, people in crises, companies—it is a whole new scene. There is no reason why, and indeed I think it is happening to some extent, the political parties could not do the same thing, extend their reach and get over the whole burden of major donations being made to parties.

That is the biggest necessary reform, but I do not expect it to happen soon because I think the Conservative Party will be adamantly opposed to it. But there are some things, a number of which have been mentioned in the debate, that could be usefully discussed in talks between the major parties. When the coalition was in office, the Deputy Prime Minister called for all-party talks. Unfortunately, although the Labour Party responded by nominating a shadow Cabinet Minister and its general secretary to take part, and the Liberal Democrats did the same, the Conservative Party did not respond at all, despite being partners in government.

It was not until the Peter Cruddas affair hit the Sunday Times that the Conservative Party decided it should do something about it. I think the Prime Minister spoke to the Deputy Prime Minister when he learned that that exposure was going to be made in the Sunday Times and suggested that he would give names to him for the all-party talks to take place, and sure enough this was used as a cover for the Cruddas coverage at that time—a very cynical way in which to handle it. Of course, no real progress was made in those talks because the Conservative Party was not interested in making progress on any of the major matters that we discussed there.

The abuses that have been taking place and are being investigated at the moment demonstrate the need for those talks to take place as soon as possible. My noble friend referred to the investigations that the police and the Electoral Commission are carrying out. In 1979, a case went to the High Court over my election expenses, and I agree with my noble friend that it is quite unacceptable that these investigations have been going on for almost two years now and the Members of Parliament concerned have no certainty over their future in Parliament, because if the police find a case against them—if abuse is found—those Conservative Members who are being investigated could lose their seats. That is an impossible position for them to be in—guilty or not guilty. The matter should be resolved and it should be resolved very quickly.

As my noble friend said, we said in the Select Committee report that talks should take place. The Government have been extremely reluctant, as demonstrated by the time it took the Minister to respond to the Select Committee report, but there are some useful things that could be discussed. I urge the Minister to respond positively to this. There are changes—some have been mentioned already in the debate; no doubt others will be as well—possibly in the tax treatment of political donations or in methods of fundraising that could be considered by joint talks, as well as the distribution of the existing funding of parties. It is a bit of a myth that there is no state funding of the parties at present. There is enormous state funding of the political parties. Whether it is through support for research assistants in Parliament or the freepost mechanism, there is an enormous amount of money and that could be looked at and a more equitable system worked out.

I hope that the Minister will respond to the debate by saying that the Government are going to initiate talks between the political parties. I think it would be welcome to the public. It certainly would be welcome on these Benches and, I hope, the Labour Benches as well, and I hope the Minister will respond well to the debate by saying that talks will be initiated.