Draft Transparency of Donations and Loans etc. (Northern Ireland political parties) order 2018

Debate between Baroness Beckett and Sammy Wilson

Tuesday 19th December 2017 General Committees

[Sammy Wilson]

I will come to the source in a moment or two. I think there has been an intervention already highlighting the answer to that. Since then there have been no representations to the Government from political parties that the date should be changed, because of course the date that was set was agreed by all the parties except the Alliance party, on the understanding that people who made donations up until that date knew that the information would not be revealed.

Let us come to the particular issue. I take issue with the Labour party for a number of reasons. First, it seems there is a fixation on the money spent on the successful campaign to get the United Kingdom to leave the EU. Perhaps the reaction from the Labour party today is more a reflection of its animosity towards the decision made by the people of the UK to leave the EU than it is about the source of the donated money.

[Margaret Beckett]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point, of course, but given that, as I understand it, the people of Northern Ireland voted to remain, does he wish that some of the money had been spent there?

[Sammy Wilson]

We did spend money in Northern Ireland on the campaign and of course it was a UK-wide campaign, not a Northern Ireland one, as the right hon. Lady knows well. We took part in the UK-wide referendum and many of our members spoke on the issue at meetings across the United Kingdom, not just in Northern Ireland. We took our place in the UK-wide campaign.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sammy Wilson]

I made the point in an intervention that there was an expectation that some people who had made donations post-2014 would not be put into the public domain. There is a real issue around it.

[Margaret Beckett]

On the point that the hon. Gentleman is making and the point made by the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar, as I understand it the Electoral Commission wrote to every political party, when the Act that was the background to this was getting Royal Assent, informing them of the future intention to publish donations from January 2014, so how can this come as a shock and put people at risk? That is a totally spurious point.

[Sammy Wilson]

It was not a black and white issue because the Electoral Commission did not say that it would publish. It said that had it been given authority by the Secretary of State, it would have published. It was not as black and white as the right hon. Lady suggests.

I have one last point. We are talking about transparency here. There is one glaring omission in the legislation, which originated with the very party that is now complaining about lack of transparency, lack of accountability and the need to clean up political donations, and that is the fact that parties in Northern Ireland—there is only one party affected by this—can receive foreign donations without having to reveal them. Sinn Féin received millions of pounds. Not hundreds of pounds, not thousands of pounds, not hundreds of thousands of pounds, but millions of pounds through foreign donations brought through the Irish Republic—[Interruption.] It was given to them by the Labour Government when special pleading was made by Sinn Féin that they had brought in so much money from foreign sources. I do not know whether it was Libya, America or some other state, but it was brought in by the Irish Republic and made exempt.

If the Labour Members really were concerned about transparency, accountability and cleaning up political donations in Northern Ireland, at least some reference, even a line of reference, might have been made by the shadow spokesman. I suspect that the real reason is that they are still happy for Sinn Féin, which has a special association with the Labour party leader, to have that lack of transparency: that cloak behind which they can bring millions of pounds into Northern Ireland and avoid having accountability.