Trade Union Political Funds and Political Party Funding

Lord Bew Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bew (CB)]

My Lords, I should declare my interest as chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life; the committee’s report in 2011 has obviously played a significant role in the discussion of the Select Committee.

I say immediately that if you are going to get something wrong, get it wrong in good company. Like the noble Lord, Lord King, who was an important member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life in its early days, I did not believe in the viability or usefulness of the committee being established in the first place. I have been proven to be quite wrong. I had perfectly reasonable reasons for believing that. I have been struggling for several years—and my predecessor for longer than that—to get movement on this issue. Having failed to do much in five years, I did not think that much would happen in five weeks. Actually, this has been a useful and valuable report.

I had another, more profound reason for scepticism. As chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, although I absolutely identified with the moral thrust of the report, particularly the commitment to the idea that these issues should be dealt with not in a partial way but across the whole terrain, I was also well aware that there were major difficulties.

For example, the report has a section supporting the idea of state funding; the noble Lord, Lord Desai, spoke eloquently about that concept this evening. However, the Deputy Prime Minister in the previous Parliament, who was referred to earlier, made it clear that that was not acceptable at a time of financial stringency, and there was no possibility of getting the major political parties to push forward that idea.

I was also well aware of the fact that neither of the major parties had agreed to our report and both dissented in significant ways. I was worried that there might be a feeling that there was a gold standard that could be returned to which embodied some form of consensus, when I knew there was no such thing. That did not matter to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and his committee, who approached the problems as they exist today, and offered some very sensible conclusions and suggestions as to the way forward out of what is an impasse.

For the remainder of my remarks, I will register one footnote to the report, raise a slight query as to meaning and then look at where we are left by the report’s conclusions. The noble Lord, Lord Burns, when talking about opting in, mentioned the 28% figure for Northern Ireland. I absolutely agree with the broad conclusion of the report: that it is unknowable what the provisions would mean in practice; we cannot be sure and there are different figures. However, the Northern Ireland figures are a bit deceptive. They are very low and relate to a wider problem, which is that the Labour Party will not organise in Northern Ireland, so it is asking people to buy nothing by opting in, which is a unique situation in that part of the United Kingdom. That is a controversial issue inside the Labour Party. In the most recent leadership election, some important contenders, including the runner-up, made it clear that they were unhappy with their party’s traditional position on the matter. None the less, you cannot really deduce anything from the Northern Ireland figures, not just because of the nature of the local traditions but because the Labour Party, unlike the Conservative Party, does not organise in Northern Ireland. That must be taken into account when looking at that very low figure.

To turn to the main thrust of the report, one important thing that the committee did was to commission certain types of evidence. There is an important document from the Conservative Party, given in evidence to the noble Lord’s committee. Paragraph 35 states:

“Party funding reform has become the embodiment of Waiting for Godot. Notwithstanding our aspirations towards a comprehensive settlement”,

which, implicitly, the Conservative Party thinks might take some time,

“we would practically suggest that—entirely separate to this Bill—there may be smaller reforms that could command some broad support, rather than trying … to achieve an all-or-nothing, ‘big bang’ solution”.

That is an interesting observation. We could address certain aspects of what is a very difficult problem in its totality, in the event that we do not within this Parliament achieve the big-bang solution. I should be very keen to hear the Minister’s reaction to that proposal, which comes from a Conservative Party document.

In conclusion, I want to say something about the Committee on Standards in Public Life. We would be very happy to play any role if a debate is initiated. We certainly intend to modernise our report and carry out new research. From some of the exchanges in the House this evening, we can see a need to do that. There is a debate about not just standards but what the current realities actually mean in political philosophical terms. That is something we can do, but if there is to be a debate and the Government choose to encourage it, we would be very happy to play a role.