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

Debate between Simon Hoare and Baroness Beckett

Tuesday 19th December 2017 General Committees

[Simon Hoare]

Self-praise is no recommendation, but I was going to say that she has impeccable credentials. Unfortunately—and I suggest that in a moment of private honesty the hon. Lady might concur with this—this country is faced with two Labour parties. As she will be aware, we face a democratically accountable, legally abiding Labour party, and a rather mysteriously funded, trade union, Momentum-inspired—

[Margaret Beckett]

rose—

[Margaret Beckett]

rose—

[Simon Hoare]

I take your guidance, Mr Hosie, and I hope that the right hon. Lady, the former deputy leader of the Labour party—[Hon. Members: “Former leader.”] She must forgive me. I give way to the former leader of the Labour party.

[Margaret Beckett]

I was wondering, in the context of why there may be differences within political parties, whether the hon. Gentleman can explain why the present Secretary of State takes a different point of view on this matter from his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers).

[Simon Hoare]

That, I suggest to the right hon. Lady, is for the Secretary of State to answer for himself, but I think my hon. Friend the Minister has set out very clearly a point on which we can all coalesce, which is that this was “the best decision”. Those are not my words, but the words of the right hon. Lady’s friend the shadow Secretary of State. He referred to it not as an okay decision or a reasonably good decision, or as one that in the round and on balance had something to merit consideration, but as “the best decision”. That assessment was made by the shadow Secretary of State and by the Secretary of State. I presume that they came to their views under separate imperatives, but they arrived at the same destination, as reported in The Irish News in the middle of July.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hoare]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. The first duty of the Government, and I think the first duty of all of us within that sensitive arena of Northern Ireland, is that we cannot just default—as handy as it might be for us to do so—to the established views of political parties. We need to have a duty of care to those individuals who thought they were operating under a certain set of circumstances at a particular time, and I think it would be entirely unjust and deleterious to having confidence in our democratic processes to arbitrarily change the position from that which they believed they were working under. My hon. Friend makes that point entirely.

[Margaret Beckett]

I do not want to detain the Committee and I promise that this will be my last observation. Is not the hon. Gentleman suggesting that he has a rather low opinion of the parties in Northern Ireland if he thinks that they would happily take money from somebody, which would be publishable, and not point out to them that that might come into the public domain? It suggests a lack of care on their part, if that were the case, which I find it hard to believe.

[Simon Hoare]

If the right hon. Lady is 100% confident that that would take place in every circumstance, of course she has a point. However, I have to say to her that I think that we all have to admit—sometimes we find it quite hard to do so—that we are frail human beings, and I just do not believe that in every circumstance somebody would be provided with that guidance or with that little bit of, “Well, this may change in due course”.

I go back to the point that it would be absolutely splendid, would it not, if political discourse in Northern Ireland could be held as robustly as it is on the mainland—I think we can all agree on that—but we are not at that position yet? And the jiggery-pokery being promoted by Opposition parties moves us a little further from achieving that position.

I will conclude by addressing the right hon. Member for Exeter. He is a distinguished Member of this House, but he did no help at all to advancing his position or this debate by the “nudge nudge, wink wink, reds under the bed” approach to doing politics that he has deployed this afternoon. I say to the Committee, in all seriousness, that we should listen with enormous care to what the Minister has said from the Dispatch Box. We are all alert.