Democratic Political Activity (Funding and Expenditure) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-10-27
Topic: Government Operations
Paul Tyler (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I am extremely grateful to a number of noble Lords who have come again on a Friday. I am afraid we have taken rather longer than on the previous occasion, but I am full of pride for the way in which we have been able as a House to look at these issues on a consensual basis, if I may again use that word. I was particularly delighted that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Salisbury referred to partial affections. I have always loved that phrase, and I have always wanted to work it into a speech in the House in some way, but he has gazumped me. If my wife is still listening to this debate—she is very patient—I should make it clear that as far as I am concerned some partial affections are still entirely acceptable It is extremely important that we pick up one of the last points made by the Minister. Politics is a reputable pursuit. I know on a number of occasions we may find it difficult to persuade the media of this, and on the whole the public sometimes have difficulty with it, not in relation to individuals, on the whole, but as a collective. Therefore, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and the Minister said, there is a very considerable case for looking again at small contributions to political parties being treated in a similar way to making contributions to charities. That would be a small sign that public life is a reputable pursuit in this country. Politics is not just a dirty game. I will come back to that point in a minute I am grateful to the Minister for repeating his agreement that we should have some more discussions about what could be incremental and what consensus there may be. As my noble friends Lord Whitty—he is my noble friend in this context—and Lord Wrigglesworth said, it was a very firm commitment in the discussions arising from the Select Committee on Trade Union Political Funds and Political Party Funding that the Government should look at that again, and the House endorsed that very strongly. Therefore, although a general election has intervened, I hope that that will still happen because I think we can make some progress On a couple of points of detail, I have not, my Bill does not and the proposals that have come forward from the Committee on Standards in Public Life have never said that there is one absolutely clear way forward. What we have said is, for goodness’ sake, let us look to see whether there is some way forward. I illustrate this with a point about the Royal Mail. I am told that the distribution of election addresses in June this year cost the state £42 million. There is an illusion out there which is shared by the Daily Mail and some other ignorant parts of the media that somehow or other there is no state funding of politics in this country, but £42 million is a lot of money. If you add to that the £100 million or thereabouts that the Government spend each year promoting their policies, not all above the threshold of impartiality that I was referring to just now, that is a lot of money too. It is important that we should make clear that none of us has suggested a huge increase in demand upon the taxpayer. We are just saying that we should try to make sure that taxpayers’ money is spent more wisely and in a way that they would accept That is where I very much agree with the Minister about the role of the Electoral Commission. I think the powers of the Electoral Commission should be strengthened. It is one of the specific issues that I have put in the Bill, and it has received a great deal of support in the past I return to the point about the reputation of politicians and politics. As the Minister said, the Committee on Standards in Public Life—I regret that the noble Lord, Lord Bew, is not in his place because he might have been able to refer to exactly where it has got to—has been asked by the Government to look at the intimidation of candidates and those active in our public life. I welcome that as extremely valuable. That inquiry into the extent of abuse this year and, I think, during the referendum is very important Although I welcomed the rather repetitive, if I may say so, contribution of the noble Lord, Lord True, I am disappointed that he did not take the opportunity today to apologise for the outrageous, abusive attacks by supporters of Zac Goldsmith on the former Member for Richmond Park. But that is a footnote. In the meantime, I seek the Second Reading of the Bill.