Political Parties: Funding

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, as on many other subjects, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. I have supported that idea for a long time. I can assure him that I shall report our exchange to the Deputy Prime Minister and suggest that he raises the matter with the Treasury.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, popular as the idea of tax relief is with the coalition Government, I do not think that it will solve the problem of funding political parties for the duration of a Parliament. I met no one at the last election who complained about the Conservative Opposition receiving £4.2 million of taxpayers’ money. Indeed, I think that very few taxpayers knew that they were contributing to the Conservative Opposition to that extent. It is critical that we get ahead with this. I am disappointed that it was not in the Queen’s Speech as part of our legislative programme for this Session. I suspect that at the next election no one will be talking about it.

[Lord McNally]

I take the point that my noble friend is making. That is why I said that we will be getting ahead with the issue early in this Parliament. We need to deal with this. As long as I have been in politics, one party or another has become embroiled in some scandal or another—and it will happen again unless we face up to the fact that politics costs money. If you want to keep big money and big influence out of politics, you have to do some radical things about party funding.