Trade Union Political Funds and Political Party Funding

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I join those who have paid tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, for his highly successful and effective chairmanship of the Select Committee. I do not think that any of us should be surprised by that when we look at his distinguished background. We should all be grateful to the committee as well. As has become clear in our proceedings this evening, there was lively discussion within the committee because views were not shared by everybody.

I want to put on record as an older politician who was fashioned in a very different age in British politics my appreciation of the intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and the contributions by the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Balfe, the latter of whom I knew in a different context at an earlier stage of my life. They brought to bear the wisdom and objectivity on which a successful parliamentary democracy must work. We are in a hopeless situation if we proceed from one crisis of confrontation to another, and if we slide into highly biased or subjective legislation on key constitutional matters. An effort at all times to generate consensus is indispensable. Those contributions to which I referred were courageous and should be listened to carefully.

This issue must be seen in the context of the reality of our society today. All of us who are serious about the stability and future of our society must be troubled by the increasing alienation of so many people from the traditional political system. It is alarming that the proportion of our population which votes in a general election is steadily declining. That cannot be a strong position for our future. Therefore the public will be watching us at this juncture. How do they think that political parties should be funded, if indeed they think the system of external funding for political parties is permissible at all?

If I had one observation about the committee’s report—although the more I think about it the more I wonder how it could have been included—it is that it does not cover the historical dimension. The trade unions and the Labour Party have always been part of the same family. What has been very strong as a contribution to the health of our democracy is that their relationship has always been transparent. When I was growing up, there were these incredible party conferences at which there were tremendous debates between leaders of the trade union movement and other members of the party. What so many people in society are deeply concerned about at the moment is that on the part of the Conservative Party it is not all transparent. That transparency and vigorous commitment to party democracy is not as evident. I am being very blunt, but it is true.

Within this whole debate that we have been having about the future of funding of political parties it has been conspicuous to a wide section of the public that the Conservatives are just getting away with it. Who is funding what and what are the deals that are done behind closed doors? What do you get in future legislation in return for the money that is being donated? What are the private conversations? What are the dinner parties? In the Labour Party, it has always been much more transparent.

I do not want to conclude on that particular note, but will finish on this. I do not believe that there is a future for our country if we run it on confrontation. We want to build consensus within our country. That is important. What is not helping is that we have a hopelessly piecemeal approach to constitutional change. It is time that we had a large national convention on what kind of society we want to be, what systems of governance we want and what funding systems we want to have within that pattern of governance. Anything short of that will not solve the problems of the future. In the mean time, we have an incredibly helpful report from the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and his committee, and it would be a very sad moment if this House did not, on all sides, seize the opportunity to take that report seriously and see how we can build for the future.