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last week, I am told, the companies division of the Department of Trade and Industry sent a request to Companies house for the civil servants there to go through the files of 12 of the late Robert Maxwell's companies to see whether they could unearth any undeclared donations to the Labour party. I hope that that means that we will at least be spared in this debate the dubious proposition advanced by the chairman of the Conservative party that it is no concern of the Government whether or not companies obey company law.Mr. Burns : Will the right hon. Lady give way?
Mrs. Beckett : I must tell the Secretary of State that I find it a somewhat doubtful manoeuvre that civil servants should be asked to do the Conservative party's dirty work. The Conservatives have every right to seek information from Companies house, but why do they not send along someone from the Conservative party and pay a search fee like everyone else?
Mr. Graham Riddick (Colne Valley) rose --
Mrs. Beckett : The Labour party's position is simple and clear : every year we publish independently audited accounts. They are reported and debated in full at our annual conference.
Mr. Burns : Will the right hon. Lady give way now?
Mrs. Beckett : I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would like to hear this.
Much of our funding comes, as the world knows, from the trade unions affiliated to our party. Indeed, that is so well known that the Conservative party in government has made repeated attempts over the past 14 years to reduce the funds and remove, if it could and at the very least restrict, the Labour party's access to those funds. In my opinion, that in itself is a rather dangerous use of political power for partisan, party political advantage. That is the kind of thing at which we raise our eyebrows when it happens in third world countries.
Our relationship with the trade unions is known, public and voluntary. It is governed by the Labour party's rules and constitution and by those of the affiliated trade unions. It is also rigidly controlled by law and supervised by a special officer of the courts. There is no question of a casual disregard for trade union law as there evidently is for company law.
Mr. Clappison rose --
nd 4.5 million of them belong to unions affiliated and contributing to the Labour party. Incidentally, they are British--
Mr. Riddick : Will the right hon. Lady give way now?
Mr. Rod Richards (Clwyd, North-West) : Give way.
Mrs. Beckett : No, I have not finished-- [Interruption.]
Madam Speaker : Order. It is pretty obvious, even to someone as thick-skinned as me, that the right hon. Lady is not giving way. Therefore, hon. Members should not persist when that is made clear.
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Mrs. Beckett : Those trade unionists live here and vote here and their interests are bound up with the future and well-being of Britain. They have no other axe to grind and no other interests to serve.
As it happens, the income that we receive from the trade unions is today a declining share of the Labour party's income. Taking the position overall, in 1991 they contributed just over 50 per cent. of the Labour party's income. By a remarkable, although unfortunate coincidence, more than 50 per cent. of the income of the Conservative party in election year came from undeclared sources.
The trade unions contributed just over £7 million to our general election campaign, 68 per cent. of those funds. The Conservative party apparently received £7 million in overseas donations alone for its election campaign--that is the heart of the matter. I say "apparently" because, although the former director of the Conservative party's board of finance, Major-General Wyldbore-Smith, has admitted as much, and its former treasurer, Lord McAlpine, has said on the record that money was paid to the Conservative party through "tons" of offshore and overseas accounts, none of this information is properly in the public domain.
The British public had no idea, when they cast their votes just over a year ago, that the money for all the seductive and untruthful advertisements attacking the Labour party came, in secret, from outside these islands.
Mr. Richards : The Labour party's accounts for 1991 show an entry of £228,000 accredited to high-value donor activity. Would the right hon. lady tell us who the donors were and how much each paid?
Mrs. Beckett : The hon. Gentleman can find that information, as he said, in the Labour party's published accounts for 1991. That is the sum total of high-value donations that the Labour party received ; it is half of what the Conservative party received from one man alone. The hon. Gentleman should take on board the fact that we are not going to accept the total double standards of the Conservative party in this matter. Almost every penny of the money that the Labour party receives is identified by organisation--because most of it comes from organisations and fund raising. We do not give the name of every pensioner who sends us a tenner, or the name of the school caretaker who writes to me every month and donates the tiny sums that he raises for the Labour party. If the Conservative party tells us who pays even half of the funds it receives, we will certainly publish the names of our contributors.
It is because of all this that we have proposed and published a charter for party political funding. One of our main proposals is that every political party should publish properly audited accounts, refuse donations from people who are neither British residents nor British nationals, and decline ever to take money from foreign Governments or their agents.
I understand that the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield told the Select Committee on Home Affairs that the Conservative party has a rule that it does not take money from foreign Governments, despite the many, many rumours to the contrary. It is not clear to me, however, from the reports that I have received of the right hon. Gentleman's evidence when exactly that rule came into force.
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Mr. Riddick : Will the right hon. Lady give way?
Madam Speaker : Order. I understand that the hon. Gentleman will seek to catch my eye later in the debate. He ought to contain himself for the moment because it seems to me that the right hon. Lady is not prepared to give way to him.
Mrs. Beckett : It is not clear to me when exactly that rule came into force.
Sir Norman Fowler (Sutton Coldfield) rose--
Mrs. Beckett : I am happy to give way to enable the right hon. Gentleman to make a clear statement on this matter.
Sir Norman Fowler rose--
Mrs. Beckett : I shall give way in just a second.
I understand that the right hon. Gentleman's evidence to the Select Committee was that such a rule now exists. It is not clear to me that he said clearly to the Select Committee when it came into force. Will he tell us, now, when it came into force?
Sir Norman Fowler : It has always existed ; it exists now and has always existed. Will the right hon. Lady, now that she has raised this question, dissociate herself from the comments that she made this morning about this totally unsubstantiated story about the Saudi Arabian royal family? She has slurred that family. Will she now withdraw her comments?
Mrs. Beckett : Madam Speaker-- [Interruption.]
Madam Speaker : Order. The right hon. Lady is at the Dispatch Box. I want to hear what she has to say--whether the House wants to or not.
Mrs. Beckett : The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield should re- read his copy of The Guardian . I see no cause for, and I do not have the slightest intention of, withdrawing what I said. What I said was clear and specific.
Serious allegations have been made--not by me--that the Conservative party took money from agents on behalf of foreign potentates. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, other allegations have been made that the Conservative party took money from agents of foreign Governments. Those allegations are important and serious and should be discussed. I said that they should be denied if they were untrue. The right hon. Gentleman has denied them, so what is he complaining about?
Sir Norman Fowler : Does the right hon. Lady accept that the allegations made in The Guardian this morning are totally untrue and that her comments, like much of her speech so far, are simply rumourmongering on her part?
Mrs. Beckett : There has conspicuously been no answer to other questions put to the right hon. Gentleman by people such as John Latsis and others, and I shall come to that in a moment. The reason why the rumours exist and the stories are-- [Interruption.] I will not withdraw.
Mr. Ashby rose --
Madam Speaker : Order. The hon. Gentleman will resume his seat.
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Mrs. Beckett : The reason why the allegations have been made goes to the heart of the debate. The Conservative party will not tell the people of the United Kingdom where it got the money. When Conservative Members tell us that, there will be no need, no cause and, presumably, no further rumours.
Before the last general election, when the Prime Minister was, as he puts it, "batting for Britain" on a two-day visit to Hong Kong at the expense of the British taxpayer, he devoted a large chunk of his time to batting for the Conservative party, attending a dinner at which large sums were raised for his election campaign. One of those said to have been present is Li Ka- Shing, who is a close associate of the Chinese Government. Many of those said to have been present are reported to have contributed substantially to Tory party funds on that occasion and others. That must, self evidently, have been at least without the disapproval of the Chinese Government and it has been alleged that it was at least partly with money to which they gave their consent. [Interruption.]
Madam Speaker : Order. The Box is not the responsibility of the House.
Mrs. Beckett : My hon. Friends are concerned that information has been passed from the Box on what they regard as a party political matter.
It has been said that one of those present is a large contributor to Conservative party funds. I find it a rich irony that money was given to the Conservative party certainly without the disapproval of the Chinese Government.
The Labour party has frequently been accused without there being the slightest word of truth in it. I hear Conservative Back Benchers making such comments today, although I notice that they do not have the guts to stand up and say it. The Labour party has often been accused of benefiting from what used to be called Moscow gold.
Mr. Peter Thurnham (Bolton, North-East) : The right hon. Lady said that she wanted to come clean about trade union contributions to the Labour party. Would she kindly tell the House about the massive contributions that the trade unions make to marginal constituencies in which trade union officials work full time during election campaigns? How much did that cost and is it fully declared?
Mrs. Beckett : The problems of Conservative Members are, first, that they assume, as I said earlier, that what they are doing must be what everyone else is doing and, secondly, that they do not understand how the structure of the Labour party works-- [Interruption.] There are strict rules about how much funding and support can be given by trade unionists to any constituency and any constituency party.
Mr. Burns : Will the right hon. Lady give way?
Mrs. Beckett : No. I am in the middle of a passage. As I was saying, the suggestion that the Labour party receives money from overseas has always been described in thrilling accents as Moscow gold. The notion that Chinese communists give consent to funding of the Tory election campaign would be hilarious if it were not serious. Of course, the Prime Minister's much reported visit to Hong Kong is not an isolated example. My hon. Friend
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the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) obtained through parliamentary questions-- [Interruption.] - -therefore, the information was extracted with difficulty from the Government--has shown that between 1988 and 1991 there were no fewer than 35 ministerial visits at taxpayers' expense to Hong Kong, of which 16 certainly involved party political activity by the Ministers in question, and a further three probably did.Mr. Burns : Will the right hon. Lady give way now?
Apart from the Prime Minister's visit and the money that was raised from Hong Kong, other allegations have repeatedly been made about a variety of donations, some suggest from Dubai and others suggest from Saudi Arabia and so on.
But I say again that the heart of the matter is that such allegations are made and they can be made because of the secrecy that surrounds the source of the Tory party's funds. In election year it spent £26 million.
Mr. Burns : Will the right hon. Lady give way?
Mr. Clappison : Will the right hon. Lady give way on that point?
Mrs. Beckett : I notice that Conservative Members always rise to their feet bellowing when we mention the word "secrecy". I wonder why.
Mr. Clappison rose--
Madam Speaker : I ask the hon. Gentleman to resume his seat. He has risen about a dozen times. If the right hon. Lady does not wish to give way, he must resume his seat. Does the right hon. Lady wish to give way? No.
Mrs. Beckett : As I was saying--I am anxious for the House to hear it--in election year the Conservative party spent £26 million. Of that, £15 million was from sources unknown. The Government's case is that none of this matters because those who give such large sums secretly to the Tory party do so without reward or even the expectation of reward, out of the sheer kindness of their hearts.
It must be a touching scene. Picture, for example, the famous meal in Hong Kong or the lunch held in Downing street just before the election. The talk turns to the shocking state of Britain. So poor, it cannot fund the Conservative party to run a decent election campaign. I wonder whether the Prime Minister allowed a small, brave, manly sob to cross his lips ; a friendly arm round his shoulders, "My dear boy, don't say another word. What is a million pounds here or there to me?"
There is no doubt that Conservative Members will have to eat all those harsh words that they have said over the years about do-gooders. There they are exposed in the ranks of their own friends doing good for the sake of it and, in classic fashion, doing it by stealth.
What is truly remarkable about the Government's version of events is that it is the overseas contributors in particular who understand that they will receive no reward except in heaven for their noble gesture. That is remarkable because we know that it has not always been so clearly understood by some nearer to home, who should in theory be more familiar with the way in which these things work.
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Lord King is often described as the ultimate insider. He is the man who successfully persuaded the Government to privatise British Airways, from which he, it would be fair to say, has profited enormously. One would think that he must have understood the delicacy of the relationship between donations to Tory party funds and political decision making. But after all those years of close association, he understood so little that he actually withdrew funding a year or so ago, linking that withdrawal explicitly and publicly to a disagreement over Government policy as it affected British Airways.Indeed, one almost gets the impression from a report in The Guardian on Monday of a reported conversation between the Prime Minister and Mr. Gorbachev that the Prime Minister forgot for a sheer microsecond, because he is said to have mentioned to Mr. Gorbachev that he was raising the matter because he had promised Lord King that he would, even though British Airways did not give money to the Tory party any more. Of course, as the Prime Minister and his colleagues have explained, that has no relevance as it does not make any difference whether or not money is given to the Tory party.
Mr. Henry Bellingham (Norfolk, North-West) : The right hon. Lady will recall the explosive issue of routes to Tokyo and slots at Heathrow, when British Airways did not get what it wanted despite the money it paid to the Tory party-- [Interruption.] --which surely proves that one cannot buy influence. Does she agree that that proves that influence cannot be bought from the Tory party?
Mrs. Beckett : I did not hear-- [Interruption.]
Madam Speaker : Order. The House must come to order.
Mrs. Beckett : I am not sure that I heard the concluding words of the hon. Gentleman's intervention, but what I heard of his remarks was well worth hearing.
The Prime Minister said last week that companies donated money to the Tory party because British business
"believes that our policies are right for British business, the British future and British jobs"--[ Official Report, 17 June 1993 ; Vol. 226, c. 990.]
Again, those who might be expected to be aware that that was the only reason for giving money to the Conservative party do not always seem to realise it.
During the Guinness dispute with Distillers, Ernest Saunders got quite the wrong end of the stick. As he said on television : "One of them, a very senior figure said he noticed we did not contribute to the Conservative Party and when were we going to I think there were three occasions during the period when it came up, not in any way as a threat. But it came up sufficiently for me to realise that if we were going to go on rolling, I would have to put this matter to the board and our policy would have to be re-thought."
The interviewer asked Mr. Saunders what he thought the comment had meant and he replied-- [Interruption.] I am sure that Conservative Members want to hear the reply, which was :
"I took it to indicate that if one was going to need political access at the highest level, and political support, then an ongoing relationship which involved contributions, would have to be part of the agenda."
We now know that he was just being reminded of the wonderful opportunities for charitable giving. It all makes a truly amazing story, some might even say an incredible one. Of course, that is just what it is--incredible, literally beyond belief. It is no longer tolerable that the party of
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government should take such large sums of money secretly and refuse to reveal to the British people whence they come.Mr. Donald Anderson (Swansea, East) : Is it not significant that the two cases where the evidence is at its clearest--Sovereign Leasing and Asil Nadir--came about through extraneous circumstances, that is, the receivership and the take-over of the company ? So is it not likely that there are bodies buried all over the place ? Surely it is right in a democracy that the governing party should come clean and show us where those bodies are.
Mrs. Beckett : My hon. Friend is entirely correct in his observation that most of the matters of which we know have emerged only incidentally and the Conservative party has not revealed the source of the money.
What is infinitely more serious than the award of honours--itself a minor scandal to which I have referred--is the influence that such secret donations buy on the policy of the British Goverment. In 1990 and in 1991, when debating the Finance Bill, we raised the issue of the generous tax treatment of offshore trusts. We said that the costs to the British taxpayers of such measures were estimated to be between £1 billion and £2 billion, and sought to persuade the Government to make a change of policy. First, the Government poured scorn on the figures. They then refused to make a change. Finally, they claimed in 1991 to have completely resolved the matter. That case was not accepted by independent commentators and accountants. I wonder whether it would have been so readily accepted by the British press if it had known that it was through such trusts and accounts that money, which at the time the Tories desperately needed, was being channelled into Tory party funds from overseas. Similarly, the tax treatment of investors not domiciled in Britain makes this country, together with countries such as Luxembourg and Switzerland, one of the most generous in the world to the seriously rich. Ministers boast of Britain being a tax haven. This year's Finance Bill further loosened the law on tax avoidance for those with available accommodation in the United Kingdom who may not now need to be taxed as residents. Meanwhile, the Government's utterly incompetent management of our economy has left us in debt up to our ears, and Ministers are attacking the unemployed, those with disabilities and pensioners. Those who give the Conservative party money are benefiting at the expense of those who have only votes to give.
Other questions about the effects of the process on Government policy are bound to arise. Why do we not ban tobacco advertising, as all medical advice suggests that we should? Is it because of the money that tobacco companies give to the Tory party--and at what cost to the British taxpayer through the health service? Why does the British taxpayer pay for an army training facility in Dubai when swingeing cuts are being made in defence expenditure? Is it, as has been alleged, as a quid pro quo because the Sultan of Dubai donates to Tory party funds?
Mrs. Beckett : Yes, it is sleaze.
Why have the Government so singularly failed to police the Companies Acts? Even more outrageous, why does the Tory party advise companies on how to get round the
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existing legislative curbs and make donations to the Tory party by the back door so that their shareholders are kept in ignorance of what is being done? We know that it has recently done so. The policies of Britain's Government should be decided by what is in the interests of the people of Britain and should never be subjugated to what is in the interests of the Tory party. If that is not happening, what do the Government have to hide? Why do they not publish full accounts? Why do they not adopt our charter proposals, which are simple and straightforward? I think that Conservative Members have forgotten that this is not the first time that the Government have had the opportunity to clean up their act. In January 1989 the House of Lords carried an amendment to put the treatment of donations by companies on much the same footing as the treatment of donations by trade unions to the Labour party. That amendment was rejected in the House of Commons. The hon. Member for Beaconsfield--who has made a lot of noise today, but all from a sedentary position--was the man who moved to reject the amendment. He said that the issue would have to be placed on an annual general meeting agenda, would be a nuisance and shareholders could get rid of directors if they chose. He said in Committee :"That is why I believe that it would be wrong in principle to clutter the agenda of annual general meetings in this way"--[ Official Report, Standing Committee D, 16 May 1989 ; c. 8.]
What an important consideration--a major and terribly worrying matter--that it would be wrong in principle for shareholders to be bothered with the little matter of whether their company gives hundreds of thousands of pounds of their money to the Conservative party, with or without their knowledge!
The suspicion unquestionably exists that, if the Conservative party will not reveal from where it obtains more than 50 per cent. of its money--[ Hon. Members :-- "The Labour party does not."] We reveal from where we obtain almost every single penny that we receive. More than 50 per cent. is undeclared, secret, large parts of it from overseas. If the Conservative party refuses to make that declaration, the suspicion must arise that the damage that would be done to the Conservative party by the British people finding out from where it obtains its money is even worse than the damage that is being done today by secrecy.
The call for reform comes not only from the Government's political opponents, but from within the ranks of the Conservative party itself. The Conservative party's organisation, the Charter Movement, says :
"The Conservative party should not be financed from abroad. It should not be financed by or on behalf of foreign governments. It should not be financed by those who have no vote in United Kingdom elections. It should not be financed in a furtive way."
Those are the words of the constituents and members of the Conservative party and they would be ashamed if they saw the way in which their representatives are behaving in the House of Commons today.
Lord McAlpine said on British television the other evening that he did not know that Asil Nadir was, as he put it, a crook. But if his donations had been publicly
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declared from the beginning, it is highly probable that word would have got back about the questions being asked.There is in all this a terrible danger for the health and well-being of democracy in Britain, a danger of which Conservative Members have no inkling or understanding. If the British people come to believe that the very processes of democracy are being insidiously suborned, to their existing disillusion with the blatant casual betrayal of all the promises that the Government made them at the election might be added that deep corrosive cynicism that, wherever it is found, saps public confidence in democracy and creates profound public unease.
This is a shabby Government, a deceitful Government, a Government unworthy of the trust that the British people placed in them last year. Their weaknesses and deceits permeate and disfigure the very fabric of British life. It is time that they went.
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