Electoral Funding: Unincorporated Associations
Debate between Jonathan Lord and Martin Docherty-Hughes(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Martin Docherty-Hughes
No, I will not. I will make it clear that I fundamentally agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald), and the Minister will not be able to turn to civil servants to answer on behalf of the Conservative party, because this is purely political. Let me also make it clear that this is the exact opposite of the probity and good governance that we would expect from a properly functioning liberal parliamentary democracy. I am sure that I am not the only one to come to the same conclusion as the DCMS Committee—that the CRC used this method.
Let me quote the Committee again. It stated that
“in order to avoid having to disclose the source of this £435,000 donation, the CRC, deliberately and knowingly, exploited a loophole in the electoral law to funnel money to the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland.”
I am of course disappointed not to see, for the first time ever, a member of the Democratic Unionist party at a Westminster Hall debate.
Martin Docherty-Hughes
No. I know that the hon. Gentleman wants to speak on behalf of the DUP, but I will not give way. I wonder how many DUP Members know what the true source of the money was and whether it did the requisite due diligence before accepting it. Why do we continue to let cowboys such as Richard Cook effectively mark their own homework? Surely there must be a way to ensure that the probity of major political donations can be assured.
Let us not forget that there is a legitimate reason for UAs to exist; it is not my intention to suggest otherwise. In a legal sense, it is understandable that certain groups may want to keep structures that have no legal existence separate from their members.
Martin Docherty-Hughes
No. As someone who worked for many years in the third sector in my constituency, I know very well—[Interruption.] Perhaps hon. Members will listen, rather than asking for an intervention they will not get. I know very well the value of UAs to organisations that do not want to be encumbered by the bureaucracy of other statuses.
Martin Docherty-Hughes
Once again, no. Political parties do this, of course. My own SNP branches—Clydebank, Dumbarton and the mighty Vale of Leven—make donations to the party, and vice versa, but the point is that they are able to do so in a transparent and accountable manner. Political parties and the sub-units therein are already, as you will know, Mr Austin, regulated as accounting units. Anyone going on to look at the list of donors to my political campaigns will know exactly where the money came from, and if it is not from an individual, people can be certain that it is from a group whose aims are well stated and well understood.
However, as we can see from the outcomes of the DCMS Committee report, donors who want to obscure the source of their donations are using unincorporated associations as a vehicle to do that. Quite simply, unincorporated associations beyond regulated political parties are a subtle legal fiction that allows fraudsters to dump dark money in our system, which is not confined to the outer reaches.
Martin Docherty-Hughes
Again, no, I will not. [Interruption.] One moment. It turns out that using UAs and similar convenient legal fictions to funnel dark money into our political system is the favoured modus operandi not only of Richard Cook, but of the Scottish Tory party of which he used to be the vice-chair.
Martin Docherty-Hughes
It does not surprise me, because the leader of the Scottish Conservative party has never even responded to my request in terms of a letter about dark money.
Martin Docherty-Hughes
No, I will not at the moment. I am going to make some progress, because I know we are short of time.
Let us be quite open: news outlets such as openDemocracy and the Ferret have documented how UAs and similar legal entities designed to obscure donations have been used to flood Scottish politics with cash. During the 2016 Holyrood election campaign that saw the Scottish Tories become the official second party, hundreds of thousands of pounds were funnelled through other organisations with an illegal remit such as the Irvine Unionist Club, the Scottish Unionist Association Trust, the Scottish Conservative Club and, of course, Focus on Scotland. Indeed, during the election to this place, in which Members from the other parties were elected, several elected candidates from the Scottish Conservative party accepted donations from opaque organisations.
Quite simply, I do not think it is befitting of our political system to continue with this type of ambiguity. In 2017, all my colleagues and I stood on a manifesto to enhance the powers of the Electoral Commission and increase the punishments available to it. The manifesto stated:
“SNP MPs will support new powers for the Electoral Commission, providing them with legal authority to investigate offences under the Representation of the People Act 1983. We will also support the Electoral Commission’s call to make higher sanctioning powers available to them, increasing the maximum penalty from £20,000 to £1,500,000.”
Martin Docherty-Hughes
No. I think that we are all very rapidly—[Interruption.] If this is a debate, perhaps a member of the Democratic Unionist party should have been here, rather than members of the Scottish Conservative party.