Political and Constitutional Reform

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right. Once the synthetic fury about the proposal dies down, I hope not only that Members in all parts of the House will see that the proposal to cap the number of Members of this House at 600 is a sensible one, based on the simple principle of fairness and equality, but that this will be accompanied by greater efforts—I hope that we will be able to work on this across party lines—to ensure that those who want to vote are registered to vote in the first place.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

The Deputy Prime Minister touched on the malign impact of big money on politics in Britain, a point on which I totally agree. Does he not accept that the only way to control that is to have rigid and low limits on spending at elections and between them, to ensure that Lord Ashcroft and his friends do not buy elections in future?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we should of course strive towards a cross-party approach on party funding, which is something to which this Government will return. We explain clearly in our coalition agreement that we want to pick up from where the cross-party talks on funding reform in the previous Parliament collapsed—and collapsed on all sides—and finally get big money out of British politics, so that the way in which we conduct ourselves and fight campaigns is beyond reproach.