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

Debate between Ben Bradshaw and Ian Paisley

Tuesday 19th December 2017 General Committees

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that, no matter what he proposes, the information that has already been made public voluntarily is no different to what the registered interest would be; that the transparency he seeks is already there; and that he could not ask for any more information than has already been revealed? Unless he is proposing a change—

[Mr Bradshaw]

Why not backdate it then?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bradshaw]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. As some Members may know, I have spent a lot of the past few months working on trying to expose dark money in British politics, and the role it may have played in the past and may be playing now. I am delighted that those on my own Front Bench and indeed those in the Scottish National party will vote against the order and I would like to explain why they have for my full support.

My hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd has already given a comprehensive outline of some of the background to the main donation that is the subject of concern, I hope, to this Committee. What he omitted to mention is that as well as the £282,000 spent on adverts in the Metro newspapers on the mainland of the United Kingdom in the referendum, £32,000 was also spent with the Canadian data company AggregateIQ, which has been linked to Donald Trump’s billionaire backer Robert Mercer, and the data company Cambridge Analytica, which is being investigated by our Information Commissioner and which has been forced to hand over emails under subpoena from the special counsel investigation under Robert Mueller looking into Russian subversion in the United States. This is a very serious matter that I hope would concern all hon. Members present.

My hon. Friend also referred to the original source of this donation: the Constitutional Research Council and its one-man-band owner or runner, Mr Cook. The Electoral Commission in Northern Ireland fined Mr Cook and his organisation £6,000 in August this year for

“failing to comply with electoral law.”

It was one of the biggest fines ever imposed by the Electoral Commission but because of the current rules, which the Government is not backdating with today’s reform, the Electoral Commission is not allowed to say why that fine was imposed or which law was broken. That is a completely unacceptable state of affairs. The only conclusion that any reasonable person can draw is that the DUP was used, with its knowledge, by the CRC to funnel money to the leave campaign in a way that to this day keeps the source of that money secret. By refusing to make this provision retrospective, the Government are effectively complicit in covering that up. Whatever your views on Brexit, Mr Hosie, the people of Northern Ireland and the UK as a whole deserve to have confidence in the transparency and integrity of our electoral and party funding system.

As we have already heard, the political parties in Northern Ireland—with the exception of the DUP—civil society in Northern Ireland, and the Electoral Commission all believe that transparency should be made retrospective to 2014, and that was their original understanding.

[Ian Paisley]

I am interested in right hon. Gentleman’s points. I wonder whether in his inquiry and examination today he will let us know whether he has done any investigation into the £13 million that Sinn Féin has deployed in elections in Northern Ireland.

[Mr Bradshaw]

My main concern in all of this is to try to uncover the dark money that played a role in the referendum campaign. If the hon. Gentleman has any evidence that he would like to send me in that respect, I would be grateful to receive it. If he wants that to be made public and transparent as well, let us backdate this to 2014. I do not understand why, if the DUP has nothing to hide, it is are being so defensive about this. If the Government have nothing to hide, why not have full transparency back to 2014?

[Ian Paisley]

rose—

[Mr Bradshaw]

The hon. Gentleman is not even a member of the Committee, so I will make progress if he does not mind. Naomi Long, the leader of the Alliance party in Northern Ireland and the politician who secured this change to the law, with the support at the time of all the Northern Ireland parties, has said:

“The successful amendment ensured that all donations dating back to the commencement date of the legislation (January 2014) can be published once the exemption is lifted.

All the parties have been advised by the Electoral Commission that this is the case and guidance was issued to ensure that all donors from that date would be advised that any anonymity would be merely temporary.”

Again, that was the understanding of the parties at the time, so why have the Government changed their mind? Why would the independent and highly respected Electoral Commission set its face so strongly against what the Government are trying to do today? The only conclusion I can reach is that the Commission knows something about that period between 2014 and 2017 that it believes to be strongly in the public interest to disclose but is prevented from doing so.