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Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 9:30 pm on 21 November 2000.

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Photo of Lord MacKay of Ardbrecknish Lord MacKay of Ardbrecknish Shadow Deputy Leader of the House of Lords 9:30, 21 November 2000

My Lords, in moving this amendment, I shall speak also to the other amendments in the group. The amendments seek to further the debate in Committee on 12th October about the clause imposing an obligation on donors. On that occasion, the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, said that a provision for sanctions against donors was essential. I shall not read out what the Neill committee says; all noble Lords present know that the committee's recommendations were quite the opposite. The committee said that there should be no comeback on the donor, and that it should be entirely the responsibility of political parties.

I was rather amused at the weekend to see that some of the Government's spin doctors were saying that the House of Lords was being naughty on this Bill and that we were going against the recommendations of the Neill committee. I do not think that the House of Lords has yet done that. The Government are inviting your Lordships to go against the committee's recommendations by including this clause.

We shall no doubt hear from the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, shortly. He, too, had concerns but was unable to support my amendment. The Government are concerned that there is a danger that a donor might split up his donations and give £200 to every constituency party. That would be considerably more than ought properly to have been reported. The noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, suggested that it could be made an offence to split up donations in that way in order to evade the reporting restrictions. My amendment has been drafted with that in mind. It would change the criteria to include deliberate, knowing, intentional evasion, rather than an accidental failure to report. It is possible that such an offence might be difficult to prove in practice. However, if someone were giving £200 to every constituency party, it would not be terribly difficult to prove. Indeed, it would not be impossible.

At present on the face of the Bill, people who give donations to a political party could be viewed as committing a criminal act just because they either forgot to report or did not realise that this clause was in the Bill. I do not expect this clause to receive widespread publicity. Therefore, it seems to me that many people may find themselves in this position. Indeed, their monthly standing order may bring them into conflict with the Bill and turn them into criminals. That is the situation that the amendment of my noble friend Lord Norton seeks to address.

I shall not continue with this point, but I feel most strongly about it as far as concerns donors. I believe that we all want people to be active in the political process; we want them to give donations. We are not talking about big donations here, nor, indeed, about small donations; we are talking about modest donations. I suggest that we do not want to criminalise donors. Neill was also very clear that he did not want to criminalise them. Therefore, the Government should listen to their own spin-doctors and abide by Neill. They should not tempt your Lordships' House by refusing these amendments or by saying that they will come forward with others on Third Reading. I am not vain enough to think that every amendment that I draft is absolutely perfect. But we should not be tempted into going against the Neill committee and receiving the ire of the Government's spin-doctors in next weekend's press reports. I beg to move.