Draft Transparency of Donations and Loans etc. (Northern Ireland political parties) order 2018

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 General Committees

[Owen Smith]

I will have to live with the terrible accusation that I was behind the curve—I freely confess that to the hon. Gentleman. However, we are now up with the curve. Our view is now very clear, which is why we will oppose the statutory instrument today.

The very simple question is this: why are people concerned about this DUP money? The reason is that the money came from something called the Constitutional Research Council—a little-known, recondite, Scottish-based Unionist think-tank of sorts—which is interesting because it had never before made a political donation of any sort. In the institution’s history, it has made one declarable donation. It does not have a website or accounts, and it seems pretty shady to me in lots of ways. It is one of those unincorporated associations that have been used to channel money to the Tory party in previous general elections.

There are significant doubts about the source of the money, and questions about what it was for and where it came from. Was it from overseas? Was it a legal donation? Of course, the DUP could clear all this up by telling us the exact source of the money.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

I am amazed at the allegations that have been made by the hon. Gentleman. First, the donation was declared. Secondly, the name of the organisation was given. Thirdly, the Electoral Commission accepted the bona fides of the group that was named. Finally, the uses to which the money was put were immediately transparent, because they were laid out to the Electoral Commission. All of that satisfied the rules of the Electoral Commission. For that reason, I find it difficult to see how he describes the money as shady. All the obligations required under the law were met.

[Owen Smith]

With the greatest respect to the hon. Gentleman, I can very easily describe the money as shady. The Constitutional Research Council is not a body that has on its books access to the best part of half a million pounds’ worth of resources. It is not a body that has made political donations other than one other self-declared donation of £6,500 to an hon. Member who campaigned for Brexit. It is not a body about which we have transparency—the person who is responsible for running the CRC has not said where the money has come from, and it has refused to reveal who its donors are. That may be its right under the nature of its unincorporated association, but I think it is shady. Given the suspicion that the DUP was used as a vehicle to channel money that could not be deployed elsewhere during the Brexit campaign, these are the right sort of questions that anybody who is interested in transparency in this House ought to be asking.

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[Owen Smith]

In that case, I cannot understand why the hon. Gentleman or any DUP Member should object to this measure being backdated to 2014. If there is nothing to hide, everybody should simply get on with revealing it and he can agree on that point.

[Sammy Wilson]

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that it would be impossible to backdate the details of one particular donation? All the donations to all the political parties would have to be backdated. He has already outlined why his party supported the non-revelation of where donations came from. People who donated money from 2014 in the anticipation that their name could not be revealed would find their names out in the public domain. It cannot be done for one particular donation—it would have to be done for every donation, which would remove the good faith that was there when people made donations before or since 2014.

[Owen Smith]

The hon. Gentleman is completely right that it would have to apply across the board for all political donations. Séamus Magee, formerly the head of the Northern Ireland Electoral Commission, tweeted:

“Every party in Northern Ireland understood that the publication of political donations over £7,500 was to be retrospective to Jan 2014.”

I presume that anybody who made a donation in Northern Ireland after January 2014 did so in full knowledge of the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2014, which made it clear that their donations would be revealed if the Secretary of State were to pass an order in this place, which he could have done in January 2014.

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[Sammy Wilson]

Thank you, Mr Hosie, for giving me the opportunity to speak, even though I know that some Committee members may object to the fact that I am not a member of the Committee. I do not know whether they are questioning my right to speak, but this issue relates to Northern Ireland. There have been queries as to whether an intervention should be accepted from both my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim and myself, but thank you for the opportunity to speak.

I am surprised by the reaction of the Labour party to this measure, for a number of reasons. It has been accepted for a long time, and indeed was accepted by the last Labour Government, that there were very good reasons why political donations in Northern Ireland, and the source of those donations, were not made public. That was because of the security situation, and the fear people had that being identified with a particular political party would make them a target. Thankfully, that issue is not as strong today, but nevertheless there remain some reservations in people’s minds, because of the ongoing terrorist activity that takes place in Northern Ireland. However, the DUP, along with other parties, supported the original measures to introduce transparency in political donations.

All the political parties, apart from the Alliance party—even when the controversy about the money for Brexit was still going on—accepted the date which is in today’s legislation. That is the first point. I know that the shadow spokesman may have had quotes from other parties about this issue, but since the consultation took place and the terms of the legislation were known, no political party has made the case to the Government to have the date changed. There have been complaints, and strangely enough they have all been about one particular donation—not about the general principle of the start date when the information should be made public.

[Owen Smith]

Can the hon. Gentleman confirm—because the chronology is important—that the consultation to which he refers, and to which the parties gave their responses, was in January 2017, and the information divulged by his party, that it was the Constitutional Research Council that gave it the £425,000 or £435,000, came only in February after the consultation had closed?

[Sammy Wilson]

And since then there has been ample opportunity. Of course the information about the donation was known before January 2017.

[Owen Smith]

Not its source, though.

[Sammy Wilson]

I will come to the source in a moment or two. I think there has been an intervention already highlighting the answer to that. Since then there have been no representations to the Government from political parties that the date should be changed, because of course the date that was set was agreed by all the parties except the Alliance party, on the understanding that people who made donations up until that date knew that the information would not be revealed.

Let us come to the particular issue. I take issue with the Labour party for a number of reasons. First, it seems there is a fixation on the money spent on the successful campaign to get the United Kingdom to leave the EU. Perhaps the reaction from the Labour party today is more a reflection of its animosity towards the decision made by the people of the UK to leave the EU than it is about the source of the donated money.

[Margaret Beckett]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point, of course, but given that, as I understand it, the people of Northern Ireland voted to remain, does he wish that some of the money had been spent there?

[Sammy Wilson]

We did spend money in Northern Ireland on the campaign and of course it was a UK-wide campaign, not a Northern Ireland one, as the right hon. Lady knows well. We took part in the UK-wide referendum and many of our members spoke on the issue at meetings across the United Kingdom, not just in Northern Ireland. We took our place in the UK-wide campaign.

[Owen Smith]

rose—

[Sammy Wilson]

Let me just finish my point. I suspect that some of this is directed more at the views of those in the Labour party who wish the referendum result had not been as it was, who are doing their best to overturn that result, and who have taken umbrage at those parties that successfully campaigned to leave the EU.

[The Chair]

Order.

[Sammy Wilson]

I shall leave that point right now, Mr Hosie.

[Owen Smith]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sammy Wilson]

Only if I am not going to be led down a route that will get me in trouble with the Chairman.

[Owen Smith]

I am grateful.

[Owen Smith]

Thank you, Mr Hosie. The hon. Gentleman is very generous with his time—as I was, of course, in accepting interventions during my speech. I just want to place it on the record that our approach has nothing to do with the Labour party’s views about Brexit; it is entirely to do with our views about transparency or otherwise. In that context, I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman will tell us who it was who asked the DUP to spend that money not in Northern Ireland but in GB.

[Sammy Wilson]

Let me come to the point on transparency. There are certain rules that are laid down by the Electoral Commission, and they were met entirely by the party. The first rule is about where the donation came from. That was declared. The second rule is about how much. That was fully declared. The third is about what it was spent on. As has been outlined in the debate, what it was spent on was completely transparent; so all the requirements for transparency were met. They satisfied the Electoral Commission and have been registered with it. Indeed, the reason we are having the debate is that the money, its source and the use to which it was put were revealed.

[Mr Bradshaw]

In that case, why were they fined?

[The Chair]

Order. We are now beyond the scope of the order. Let us focus on that.

[Sammy Wilson]

With your instructions, Mr Hosie, I will move on to where we are with this debate. Despite the fact that everything was known—we have already had it outlined in the Committee today—the Opposition spokesman still supported, right up until the summer of this year, the publication date, despite the controversy that there was and despite the allegations that have been made by Sinn Féin regarding the money.

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is coming to the crux of the argument as I see it, which is that there was full transparency. Given that there was and given that in January all political parties apart from the Alliance party and the Labour party agreed that it would be wrong to backdate by three years, to now transform that policy to say that things should be backdated by three years is to again put at risk some people in Northern Ireland who may have given donations in the years between 2014 and now. It is political point scoring and it is not taking account of the political—[Interruption.] It is not about protecting people in Northern Ireland who may be in danger if this delegated legislation does not go through. The Opposition will be culpable in anything that happens to those donors past this point.

[Sammy Wilson]

I made the point in an intervention that there was an expectation that some people who had made donations post-2014 would not be put into the public domain. There is a real issue around it.

[Margaret Beckett]

On the point that the hon. Gentleman is making and the point made by the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar, as I understand it the Electoral Commission wrote to every political party, when the Act that was the background to this was getting Royal Assent, informing them of the future intention to publish donations from January 2014, so how can this come as a shock and put people at risk? That is a totally spurious point.

[Sammy Wilson]

It was not a black and white issue because the Electoral Commission did not say that it would publish. It said that had it been given authority by the Secretary of State, it would have published. It was not as black and white as the right hon. Lady suggests.

I have one last point. We are talking about transparency here. There is one glaring omission in the legislation, which originated with the very party that is now complaining about lack of transparency, lack of accountability and the need to clean up political donations, and that is the fact that parties in Northern Ireland—there is only one party affected by this—can receive foreign donations without having to reveal them. Sinn Féin received millions of pounds. Not hundreds of pounds, not thousands of pounds, not hundreds of thousands of pounds, but millions of pounds through foreign donations brought through the Irish Republic—[Interruption.] It was given to them by the Labour Government when special pleading was made by Sinn Féin that they had brought in so much money from foreign sources. I do not know whether it was Libya, America or some other state, but it was brought in by the Irish Republic and made exempt.

If the Labour Members really were concerned about transparency, accountability and cleaning up political donations in Northern Ireland, at least some reference, even a line of reference, might have been made by the shadow spokesman. I suspect that the real reason is that they are still happy for Sinn Féin, which has a special association with the Labour party leader, to have that lack of transparency: that cloak behind which they can bring millions of pounds into Northern Ireland and avoid having accountability.

[Mr Bradshaw]

Does the hon. Gentleman have any concern at all that the CRC, who made the donation to his party, has been fined, and the fine was made public in August?

[Sammy Wilson]

Again, I do not know about the fine or the source or the reason for the fine. If they were fined, that shows that there was transparency about this. That is the point I have been trying to make very clearly. It was known how the money was spent. If the rules were broken, then sanctions were imposed on it. I would have thought that that undermines the right hon. Gentleman’s argument about some dark cloak here, dark money and lack of accountability and transparency. Otherwise the Electoral Commission would not have been in a position to impose a fine, because it would not have known, because it was under a cloak of darkness. I think the right hon. Gentleman has to make his mind up. The fine actually makes the point for me.

To close, I believe that the terms of the order reflect—I will give way in a moment, because I would like to hear whether the Labour party still supports the exemption for political donations from foreign sources exclusively. Do Labour Members regard it as only affecting Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland, or would they like to see further legislation to stop that inflow of funds, which is totally hidden and used by Sinn Féin and is one of the reasons why they can spend so much on elections, because they do have sources of funding which other parties in the United Kingdom cannot obtain?

[Owen Smith]

We believe that there should be transparency and we believe that there should not be foreign moneys coming into our politics. That is very clear. In that context, I wonder if the hon. Gentleman can confirm whether he knows definitively whether this money from the CRC came from foreign sources or definitively came from within the UK, and if he does not know that, does he not think the DUP should have found that out?

[Sammy Wilson]

If it came from foreign sources, the Electoral Commission would have taken the requisite legal steps to fine the party and to fine other sources; otherwise, the Electoral Commission would have an interest in that.

In closing, this debate has been agreed by the parties. It was not contested by the Labour Party, right up until the very latest time. It is a debate which I believe safeguards those who give donations in good faith. It is a debate which, if moved, would not move this issue about the donation around the Brexit campaign one inch further, because no further information would be given. For those reasons, I hope that the Committee will support the order.