| Previous Section | Home Page |
Mr. Duncan Smith : I understand, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I may be straying from the subject.
Mr. Deputy Speaker : I was giving the hon. Gentleman the benefit of the doubt. He was going to relate this to Opposition research expenditure, but he has not so far managed to do so. I wait with anticipation.
Mr. Duncan Smith : I was going to say that there was a possibility that the outrage in Waltham Forest might have had, at some stage, links with research work carried out here for the Opposition parties to support their ability to say these things. I denounce outright any group that defies the laws on the statute book. I am sure that the Opposition parties will want to do the same.
We should know more about where the money goes. We have a clear insight of things like office costs, but we do not have it here to the same extent ; I would like to know more about where the money goes across the board. Transparency is a good thing, and I am keen to see a requirement for a more detailed inventory.
9.21 pm
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : I do not think that the Leader of the Opposition needs lectures from Tory Members of Parliament, about 200 of whom make money moonlighting in the law courts or as directors of as many as five, six or seven companies, and lining their pockets left, right and centre. Some 19 ex-Cabinet Ministers are now directors of 59 different companies. About six of those have moved into private companies, and many of them were Secretaries of State when the relevant legislation went through.
I want to deal with a philosophical argument about the money. It has nothing to do with the way in which the
Column 609
money is spent by my right hon. and hon. Friends ; it is about the direction in which it is spent. Some Tory Members of Parliament are trying to suggest that somehow or other we get money in the same way as them. We do not get money from Asil Nadir or Greek fascists --we do not get any of that kind of money. I find it hard to believe that the Tory party is £19 million in debt, although I keep reading about it. I reckon that it has some more money stashed away in Liechtenstein, probably from the same bloke.When the Short money was introduced in 1978, the Tories were the first recipients. They did not argue the toss about it, but were happy to take the money and run. I know, because I was here ; I watched them and listened to them. What worries me is that we have had the money since 1979 and never won an election.
I have always held the view that the money could have been directed in a different way, not that it has been ill spent. That view is contrary to the view of some of my right hon. and hon. Friends. I said at the time that the money should have gone to the Labour party. I would rather it went to Labour party headquarters to pay for research assistants at national level and the regional Labour party headquarters. In that way, the whole party would benefit. When the money was introduced, the Liberal party switched funds and switched certain personnel from the Liberal party headquarters down to Parliament in order properly to qualify for the money. I am not saying that the Liberal party was doing anything wrong, but we certainly did not do it. I was a member of the Labour party executive at the time, and my argument has always been that, as the Liberal party had shifted its personnel from its headquarters to work in Parliament, there is a case for the money to be used at that level. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East (Mr. Brown) knows about those discussions and is aware of the arguments that prevailed at that time.
We do not need Government lectures on spending because their own expenditure is enormous. No one can argue that is not the case. Some £10.7 million has been spent on the Prime Minister's office. When sunny Jim Callaghan left, the figure was £1.25 million. I know there has been some inflation, although according to the Tory Government there has been hardly any. Nevertheless, there is a big difference between £1.25 million at the time that Jim Callaghan left No. 10 and the £10 million being spent on the present Prime Minister. The Government also spend more than £6 million a year on travel all over the world. There are more jaunts today by the Prime Minister and other Ministers-- especially if they want to escape answering questions--than at any other time that I can recall. I am not arguing whether such expenditure is right in terms of the money being available--I just wish that money had been spent differently. I do not imagine that the Short money will win us the next election. I am sure that we will win it anyway. I well understand why the Leader of the House is concerned about the money, because he knows that his party will be the recipient next time. He will probably be able to wear that top hat a lot more when we push through legislation.
I suspect that the special travel allowance is connected with the Common Market. Everyone knows my view that
Column 610
the Common Market has been an unmitigated disaster. The Government allow Back Benchers to travel to Strasbourg or Brussels once a year, but I will not go there. You will not catch me knocking on Common Market doors. It worries me that there is some connection.Mr. Simon Hughes : Yes, there is.
Mr. Skinner : The hon. Gentleman should know, because he is always on about proportional representation and the unfairness of the present voting system. Short money is PR in inverse proportion to the number of seats and votes won. There are about 20 Liberal Members of Parliament and every one of them is a parliamentary spokesperson.
Mr. Skinner : That means that 18 out of the 20 Liberal Members of Parliament will receive the travel allowance. Of the Labour party's 270 Members of Parliament, only 85 will receive the
allowance--provided that it is not confined to members of the shadow Cabinet. Perhaps the Leader of the House will say who will qualify. I have already established that 18 Liberal Members of Parliament out of 20 will get the money.
Mr. Hughes : It is only £15,000 a year.
Mr. Skinner : Yes, but they will share that between them as well. The hon. Gentleman has seven jobs. How much Short money will he get ?
I suggest that the hon. Gentleman also examines the car allowance. If the leader of the Liberal party has three free cars, the others should share the rest between them.
9.28 pm
Mr. Roger Evans (Monmouth) : My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said that the principle was reasonably well established. That is typical of the insidious comfortable consensus that sometimes emerges from members of both Front Benches. This consensus is a particularly unpleasant 1970s consensus, from a dark age when fundamentals were not addressed. The Opposition parties are perfectly consistent and philosophical. They believe that public money can be spent on anything--that it does not belong to the taxpayer and is at the disposal of the state.
Political parties are voluntary organisations. To the Conservative, it is peculiar in principle that voluntary organisations should use the inquisition-type powers of the state to compel payments to them. It is fundamentally startling and wrong in principle.
Let us take the argument one stage further. Even if it is wrong in principle, what the motion proposes is bizarre.
Mr. Winnick : Before the hon. Gentleman leaves what he considers to be matters of principle, will he answer two questions? First, if it is wrong to subsidise, why does he accept a salary? After all, it could be argued that the taxpayer should not subsidise those who freely decide to take a chance on being elected to this place. Secondly, does not his constituency party receive a subsidy at a general election, to which, presumably, the hon. Gentleman does not object? That is taxpayers' money. Why does not he say that he is willing to pay and not the taxpayer?
Mr. Evans : The hon. Gentleman's arguments are fundamentally bad in principle. We have never objected to
Column 611
the payment of hon. Members. What is wrong is the payment of informal voluntary organisations by the use of bizarre subsidies. It is a peculiar anomaly that a nationalised industry--the Post Office--allows candidates to have freepost during elections. All candidates take advantage of that service. It is an old anomaly and it cannot be defended.Paragraph 1(1)(a) refers to at least two hon. Members of the party who were elected after contesting the previous election as candidates of that party. That led to bizarre consequences in 1981, when members of the Labour party defected to the SDP and a specific resolution had to be passed to deal with that contingency. A special resolution had to be passed for Liberal Democrat Members who had not fought the preceding election as members of that party.
The point of constitutional principle is that, traditionaly, the constitution recognsies individual hon. Members, not political parties. The provisions of the motion are direct shackles on the freedom of hon. Members to leave parties and to form new one. That is not constitutionally right.
The second aspect is even more bizarre : paragraph (b) of the resolution. Plaid Cymru, mercifully for it, has enough Members of Parliament to get over the hurdle in paragraph (a). But under paragraph B, the point of principle is even more bizarre. A party with one Member of Parliament must have had the aggregate of at least 150,000 votes cast in favour of all its candidates. Even if we do not take it as far as my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) put it--about parties where all the candidates say different things--there is a problem in Wales ; Plaid Cymru attracted abut 156, 000 votes. It got over hurdle (a), so this does not arise, but if it had not, three of those candidates were joint Plaid Cymru-Green candidates. We want to know in Wales whether it is one party--Plaid Cymru-- or two parties : Plaid Cymru and the Green party. In fact, 170, 000 people voted green at the last election, but they did not elect a single Member of Parliament, so this does not arise.
These are arbitrary and indefensible distinctions that arise because a scheme has to be set up to allot public moneys. We all know that, when it comes to allotting public moneys, principle is soon lost and adverse and unsatisfactory compromises result.
The third feature that is so wrong is what the money is spent on. The Library brief, which has been referred to, shows that little information has been published. It gives us some helpful information that apparently was volunteered by the Liberal and Labour parties. Figures for the most recently available year show that 21.2 per cent. of Labour's expenditure from these moneys went on its leader. We do not know whether that was to provide the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) with a golden palanquin and liveried servants to get to his place in the House. The Labour party does not choose to publish details of such expenditure. If public moneys are to be expended, I would argue that there should be proper public accountability.
Ms Armstrong : The hon. Gentleman's comments beggar belief. His party publishes nothing about its spending. We know nothing of how the Government are using the money that they receive for the Prime Minister's office or for political advisers to Cabinet members, but that money also comes from the public purse--and in much greater amounts than anything given to the Opposition.
Column 612
Mr. Evans : They are payments for the Government and they are fundamentally different in character from payments for political parties. It is a completely different issue.
Mr. Duncan Smith : Does my right hon. Friend agree with my previous point, that transparency is all and that the Opposition parties should not be scared of it? Transparency would enable us to ascertain whether they were receiving money from socialist councils such as mine in Waltham Forest, which I decry.
Mr. Evans : Transparency and accountability are fundamental in the expenditure of public as opposed to private moneys. The current method is startling.
I have two final objections to the motion. First, this is the wrong time, and we are all familiar with that argument. The second objection is constitutional. It was taken up by the former hon. Member for Tiverton when the issue was first debated. There is no enabling Act of Parliament or proper statute to authorise the payment of moneys under this motion. That has important constitutional consequences.
Resolutions must now, due to the passage of time, be in order, and no one is suggesting otherwise. However, because the payments are made by resolution, they are not justiciable in the courts just as, I imagine, on the same principle, the standard spending assessments and the revenue support grants under the Local Government Finance Act 1988 are not challengeable by way of judicial review. In other words, the House is acting unilaterally and without judicial check in the courts in order to defray public moneys when we do not know in detail what they are being spent on. That is a constitutional abomination, and I shall certainly oppose the motion.
9.37 pm
Mr. Patrick Cormack (Staffordshire, South) : When I came to listen to the debate, I did not expect that I should be speaking in support of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett), the hon. Members for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) and for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) and against some of my eccentric colleagues. In my estimation, the entertaining, witty and amusing speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. Evans) qualifies him for immediate promotion to the Whips Office.
In the late 1970s, we were the first recipients of this largesse, small as it was. We put it to extremely good use : in two years we had returned the Conservative party to power, where it has remained ever since. The fact that the Opposition have perhaps not put it to such good use does not invalidate the concept.
There is a serious issue of which every hon. Member should be aware. When I intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier), I referred to the money that is available to legislators in the United States and many other countries. We must remember that we are not talking about the funding of political parties. If we were, I would disagree with the right hon. Member for Derby, South because I do not favour public funding of political parties. We seek to increase the level of information and intelligence in the Chamber and to
Column 613
facilitate better debate. One might say that it has not always been terribly productive and that recent occurrences support that notion. However, I believe that this is an extremely modest provision. It is sensible and fair to give to an Opposition party which has a very real national responsibility a relatively small sum of money to enable it to discharge its responsibility. After all, we are talking about Her Majesty's loyal Opposition. The quality of legislation in this place can be improved only if there is detailed scrutiny by people who know what they are talking about.In recent years, Parliament has suffered because legislation has not been examined with sufficient scrutiny. There are many reasons for that. The fundamental reason is that in recent years, both Labour and Conservative Governments have broken their election pledges that they would introduce less legislation and not more.
I very much hope that, in two weeks' time, the Queen's Speech will include far less legislation and that we can really get on top of that legislation. No hon. Member, whether he or she be an Opposition Member or a Government Member, can honestly say that he or she honestly understands all the legislation that comes before this place. However, it is of fundamental national importance that the Opposition parties and particularly the official Opposition, should be able to do that.
I am not a critic of the civil service. I believe that this country is exceptionally well served by its civil servants. It is one of the great jewels of our system that we have a civil service that remains with the Government if the governing party changes. Our civil service is of great quality. However, when we consider the resources that the civil service provides for the Government and the meagre, modest resources which the motion provides for the Opposition, we cannot do anything other than support my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House if we look at the matter fairly and objectively.
I would include just one amendment to the motion. I believe that the money should be a little more widely spread. I should like the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) to be able to go abroad and to visit all the countries of the European Community. [Interruption.] The Opposition Chief Whip may want him to go permanently, but many hon. Members would not really want that to happen. We would love to see the new breadth, enlightenment and vision that would burgeon forth from Bolsover if the hon. Gentleman had a little Short money to take him round the world. I appeal to the Opposition to find some way to send one of the most endearing of all parliamentary characters on his travels.
9.42 pm
Mr. Newton : I have followed the debate with considerable interest. However, it is difficult to find points to which I can add a great deal more than what I said earlier. Without upsetting the Opposition, I must tell my Conservative colleagues that I found entirely understandable their concern expressed in the wake of last night's events. On the other hand, it is right to balance those concerns with the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack), which were the points on which I tried to focus in my opening remarks.
Column 614
I do not accept all the comparisons made by the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett). However, she knows from our discussions that I thought that she made several legitimate points, as did the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes). I am grateful to learn that they think that this settlement, which the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey said is not overwhelmingly generous let alone profligate in comparison with the sums paid before taking account of inflation in the intervening period, is fair and reasonable and provides a base for a continued acceptance of a settlement along these lines.I shall say very little more. I should reveal to the House that the only reason why I spoke at all was that there was some anxiety about whether the House was prepared for the next business--a task which I occasionally had to encourage others to do in my days as a Government Whip. But it enables me to put on record one point.
I realised during the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. Evans) that I inadvertently misled the House in my opening speech by a slip of one word. I said, I think, that "a party is for this purpose defined as having at least two Members of Parliament and having received at least 150,000 votes at the last general election."
As those who study the motion will see, it should have been "or" rather than "and" in the middle of that sentence.
It has not been absolutely clear in the debate, but it should be placed on record as my last remark in the proceedings, that a proportion of the money goes not only to the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats, but to the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Ulster Unionist party, the Ulster Democratic Unionist party and the Social and Democratic Labour party on the same formulation as is applied for the main Opposition party and the Liberal Democrats. That should be clear to everybody, and it interrelates with the point that I am making in correcting the inadvertent slip in my opening speech.
With those remarks, I commend the motion to the House.
Question put :--
The House divided : Ayes 72, Noes 15.
Division No. 402] [9.45 pm
AYES
Allen, Graham
Amess, David
Armstrong, Hilary
Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy
Baker, Nicholas (Dorset North)
Baldry, Tony
Barnes, Harry
Beckett, Rt Hon Margaret
Beith, Rt Hon A. J.
Blackburn, Dr John G.
Boateng, Paul
Bottomley, Peter (Eltham)
Brown, N. (N'c'tle upon Tyne E)
Burns, Simon
Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)
Campbell-Savours, D. N.
Carlile, Alexander (Montgomry)
Chapman, Sydney
Clwyd, Mrs Ann
Cook, Robin (Livingston)
Cormack, Patrick
Ewing, Mrs Margaret
Foster, Rt Hon Derek
Foster, Don (Bath)
Fraser, John
Fyfe, Maria
Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth, N)
Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)
Harvey, Nick
Hill, Keith (Streatham)
Howells, Dr. Kim (Pontypridd)
Hughes, Simon (Southwark)
Jones, Nigel (Cheltenham)
Knight, Greg (Derby N)
Llwyd, Elfyn
Lynne, Ms Liz
Mackinlay, Andrew
McLeish, Henry
Maclennan, Robert
Maddock, Mrs Diana
Malone, Gerald
Marshall, John (Hendon S)
Michael, Alun
Morgan, Rhodri
Newton, Rt Hon Tony
Page, Richard
Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey
Powell, Ray (Ogmore)
Prescott, John
Quin, Ms Joyce
Rendel, David
Robertson, George (Hamilton)
| Next Section
| Home Page |