Political Parties (Funding and Expenditure) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-03-10
Topic: Government Operations
George Young (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, for the opportunity to debate this important issue, and to all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate. I congratulate the noble Lord, with whom I have been debating in a variety of institutions for 57 years—he said 55 but I make it 57—on producing a substantial piece of legislation: a much richer diet than we are normally used to on a Friday. As he said, this is based on work by MPs of all three parties, supported by some professional input. I am grateful for his kind words about me and I reciprocate by complimenting him on his consistent campaign on matters of constitutional reform over a number of decades As the noble Lord indicated, he has been here long enough to know that a Bill that gets its Second Reading in the first of two Houses on the last sitting Friday has a short life expectancy. However, this is an important subject that deserves an airing. I was struck by what the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, said when he opened a short debate on a similar subject on 3 November last year. He said that, "party funding reform is rather like Lords reform: we come back to it every other year, or at least once every Parliament; we … get round to setting up a working group; the parties fail to agree; we go away and significant change is rarely made".—[Official Report, 3/11/16; col. 867.] I think that parallel is actually instructive, and I will return to it later The current regime to regulate political parties and party funding was established in the PPER Act 2000, on which I and, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, were our respective parties’ spokesmen as it went through the other place. Since then there have been a number of proposals to reform the system. Indeed, the proposals of both the Committee on Standards in Public Life in 2011 and those of Sir Hayden Phillips in 2007 are drawn on in this Bill. However, despite a decade of talks, there has been no cross-party agreement on changes to party funding. Wide-ranging talks were held in 2012 and 2013, with representatives meeting seven times. Many of the issues raised by noble Lords today were covered during those talks Unfortunately, as on previous occasions, the parties did not reach agreement during those talks. No consensus has emerged since then and, understandably, the Government are reluctant to make changes without that consent. In a debate on 9 March last year the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, quoted Winston Churchill counselling in 1948 against one party imposing its will on another on matters affecting the interests of rival parties. Several noble Lords have called for cross-party talks on this subject to be resumed. For those to be worthwhile, there would need to be some agreement about the basis of the talks so that we do not simply repeat the fruitless exercises of the past. I will return to this point at the end of my remarks The Bill uses the proposals of the CSPL from 2011, in particular, as its foundation. We must remember that that report did not receive cross-party support. Indeed, there were dissenting opinions within the report itself. Both Labour and Conservative members of the committee disagreed with its conclusions, as the noble Lord, Lord Bew, reminded us The Bill suggests reallocating and increasing state funding for political parties in Clauses 10 to 14— a subject touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. The Government do not believe that there is any public appetite for more taxpayer funding of politicians and political parties at this time. Noble Lords will be familiar with the advice of Nick Clegg in another place that, "the case cannot be made for greater state funding of political parties at a time when budgets are being squeezed and economic recovery remains the highest priority".—[Official Report, Commons, 23/11/11; col. 25WS.] That advice seems as relevant today as it was then. Indeed, as substantial demands are likely to be made on the public purse to restore the building in which politicians work, it might test the patience of the public if at the same time we were to ask for significantly greater support for the trade we carry on within it Instead, we want to reduce the cost of politics, and we are taking steps towards this by reducing the size of the House of Commons—which I hope noble Lords will support when the relevant SI comes before us—freezing ministerial pay and stopping unanticipated hikes in the cost of Short money.