Political Parties and Elections Bill
12:00 pm
Sir Hayden Phillips: You have illustrated one of the stumbling blocks in trying to create an agreed position. On the one hand, one position says, “In the modern world, this should all be much clearer and we should not have this relationship. People should have freedom of choice.” On the other, we wanted to try to respect the historic traditions of the different parties. I am referring not just to the Labour party, but to the structure of the Conservative party in which some of the proposals presented some internal constitutional problems. Trying to get the balance right between respecting the way in which parties have developed and grown and what their traditions are with greater clarity and freedom of choice got me to the position that I was in a year ago when I published my proposals. I did not believe that at that stage the Labour party could go any further in making changes along the lines preferred by the Conservative party without creating severe difficulties for itself. I respect that—it is a pity, but there we are. That is my general answer.