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

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 General Committees

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Hosie.

Of course one welcomes any attempt to increase democratic transparency, but I oppose the draft order. In all good conscience, I cannot support it. The principle is simple, that the cash given to parties in Northern Ireland should be laid out clearly so that any member of the public may examine it, and that should apply to the historical records as well.

I know that the position of the Secretary of State, the Minister and their Department is that it would not be fair to impose retrospective regulations, as we have heard. Those regulations, however, would not be retrospective, as the Minister said—they are in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.

In 2007, when the Northern Ireland parties became subject to the same reporting regulations as parties in Scotland, Wales and England, donor confidentiality was applied with an end date of October 2010. During that period the legislation was clear that all donations would be made public when the donor anonymity period ended. There was a change of Government in Whitehall in 2010 and the donor confidentiality scheme, called the prescribed period in legislation, was extended until March 2011 to allow a consultation.

In that consultation the Northern Ireland Office made it clear that retrospective publication of donor names and of those providing loans was coming. Donors to parties in Northern Ireland should have been well aware, and the parties should have informed them, that their names and donations would become known in future. They should have been aware of it from 2010, if not before, and any failure on the part of any of the parties in Northern Ireland to inform their donors of that should not be remedied by secondary legislation in this place.

The 2010 consultation found, by the way, that the public in Northern Ireland thought that Northern Ireland had moved on enough to render donor intimidation a negligible concern. Just over three quarters of people and organisations who responded, or 77%, wanted the prescribed period to end and the retrospective publication of donors’ names to go ahead. Every single individual who responded who was not aligned with a political party favoured full transparency and retrospective publication.

The Government clearly disagreed, though, and sided with the 12% of respondents who had favoured continuing secrecy and no publication. That 12% included the DUP and the UUP. That information comes from the Government’s response to the consultation, which also pointed out that some supporters of continued secrecy favoured retrospective publication when the system changed. The Government frankly rode roughshod over the wishes of the people, and—it seems clear to me—extended the prescribed period until 2013.

Three of every four respondents to the consultation favoured openness. Four in every five favoured retrospective publication. Yet the Government went with the DUP’s suggestion of keeping it locked up tight. I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt, but I do wonder what needed to be kept secret in 2010 that still needs to be kept secret now.

The principle of retrospective publication was endorsed again in the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2014, a shorter period perhaps, but that Act—which gained Royal Assent that March—had 1 January of that year as the date from which publication rules would have effect. In his statement in July, the Secretary of State said that changing that date

“is about compliance with the regulations and seeing that those making donations are able to make those determinations based on the law that is in existence”. —[Official Report, 3 July 2017; Vol. 626, c. 907.]

But it is clear that the law that was in existence always envisaged retrospective publication, and the 2014 Act envisaged publication for the first day of that year. In his letter of 5 July 2017 to the hon. Member for Pontypridd, the Secretary of State said that he

“did not believe it right to impose retrospective regulations”.

I can assure him that he can publish back to 2007 and not impose retrospective regulations.

The Secretary of State can also take comfort from the knowledge that the Assembly’s website includes a register of interests for MLAs wherein they declare donations made to themselves and constituency organisations and other associated bodies, and that has not resulted in donor intimidation. Indeed, the leader of the DUP has an entry in it for the most recent election. I do not know whether that register has always been in the public domain but it was in 2010, and if that publication has proven to be unproblematic I see no reason why proper publication of donations to political parties has been so contentious. Nor do I see any problem at all with retrospective publication. It is simply not good enough for us to agree to yet another date for when publication would start, a date that I should point out means there will be some retrospective publication. There is already far too much that is hidden, and far too much that has a cloak of darkness pulled over it. The applicable date should be in November 2007 when reporting to the Electoral Commission started, but I will take 1 January 2014 as a good start. It is my belief that this order should not proceed to the House without a proper and substantive vote, so I will be voting against it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chloe Smith]

I agree with my hon. Friend and I think that it is rather a shame that we have had to have this discussion. Let us take the point of Brexit: in the time that we have been working hard to deliver transparency, since January 2014, the hon. Member for Pontypridd and his party have taken seven different positions on Brexit alone. We need to do a little better than that.

[Deidre Brock]

Will the Minister give way?

[Chloe Smith]

No, I will take no more interventions as I need to make progress.

[Deidre Brock]

Please.

[Chloe Smith]

I am just about to come to the hon. Lady’s comments—I thought she might like it if I did that. She said that the 2014 Act obliged us to publish from then, but I am afraid that it does not. It is an option and not a requirement under that 2014 legislation. She is also of the view that we should not leave anything in the dark, that we should not delay and that we should not set yet another date. Again, why is she is voting against today’s transparency? It is a very unwise thing to do. It would leave donations now in the dark. It would leave us without a date and with no transparency.

[Deidre Brock]

Will the Minister explain why MLAs currently declare their donations on their register of interests on the Northern Ireland Assembly website? She is attempting to block publication of donations, which all parties accept is likely to happen, as she has generally recognised since at least 1 January 2014.