Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew George Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

5. What progress the Government has made in reviewing the law on the funding of political parties; and if he will make a statement.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

6. What recent assessment he has made of the need for reforms to party funding.

[The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)]

I have always been clear that any reform is best achieved by consensus. Despite seven meetings, I am disappointed that, as on previous occasions, there has been no agreement between the three parties on beginning party funding reform.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I would love to think that there might be a realistic prospect of that, but, frankly, I do not think that there is. We tested it to destruction in seven meetings that brought the three parties together over a prolonged period on the back of very strong recommendations from Sir Christopher Kelly and his Committee. Not to put it too delicately, the same old vested interests relating to donation caps on the one hand and the financial relationship between the Labour party and the trade unions on the other were, once again, not reconcilable. Until we get those two things aligned, a cross-party agreement on party funding is unlikely—but it will have to happen eventually; otherwise we will be afflicted by scandal after scandal and controversy after controversy.

[Andrew George]

What is my right hon. Friend doing to ensure that company shareholders, co-op members and union members have a reasonable say on political donations made in their name?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

If I understand it correctly, moves are afoot, although they are rather opaque to an outsider so far as the trade union funding link with the Labour party is concerned. More generally, transparency has to be a good thing when money is sloshing around the system and it could influence democratic electoral contests. To return to my earlier theme, this is what the transparency provisions on third party campaigning are all about—not to stop charities from doing their work or from campaigning, but simply to make them transparent in how the money is used, particularly where they choose to use money for explicitly political ends to engineer or influence a particular outcome in a constituency.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I hope the hon. Lady will accept that there is an underlying problem. We have lots of people on the social rented sector waiting list. There are 1.8 million households on the waiting list and about 1.5 million bedrooms in the social rented sector are not being used. We need somehow to make sure that those people who do not have homes are better matched with available homes. At the same time we have many families living in very overcrowded conditions. Those are the problems: those are the imbalances of the system that we are trying to straighten out. I accept that that leads to some hard cases. They need to be treated fairly and compassionately.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

T7. What is my right hon. Friend doing to ensure the UK maximises the opportunity for green growth and green jobs across the UK?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

My view is that an island such as ours has a huge commercial opportunity, particularly with the capacity for offshore wind that we have as a country. It might sound odd to say that there is a commercial opportunity in the face of such a grave threat as climate change, but there is a commercial opportunity if we can show that we have the technologies, the science, the companies and the strategies to adapt to these new environmental realities. I think that that would be a great opportunity to create jobs for many thousands of people throughout the country.