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Mr. Spellar indicated dissent.

Mr. Garnier: Does the hon. Gentleman wish to intervene?

Mr. Spellar: The hon. and learned Gentleman asked if we would agreed to that proposition, and I say certainly not. In a democracy, the electorate have a right to know who is donating to the political parties that are seeking to run the country and then to draw their own conclusions. That is the Bill's essence.

Mr. Garnier: I think that we have the beginnings of a reasonable argument; the hon. Gentleman has put forward his case, and I shall remind the House of what the then chairman of the Conservative party said in response to that line of argument.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield said that what individuals do with their money is entirely a matter for them, and I suggest that it is not a legitimate interest for inquisitive journalists, political opponents or even the state to know what private individuals give to Oxfam, for example, or to the Labour party, the Conservative party or the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The interest pretended by the hon. Gentleman is merely prurient and has no genuine public interest basis.

I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield that to reveal the name of an individual donor would be a breach of that donor's right to privacy, although there is nothing to stop an individual donor making his name known if he chooses to do so. Perhaps one of the differences between the interfering, statist Labour party and the Conservative party, of which I am a member, is that the Conservative party respects and hopes to protect the individual's rights, and perhaps that is why a gulf is emerging across the Floor of the House in this debate.

Mr. Jenkin: Did my hon. and learned Friend notice that the hon. Member for Warley, West implied in his intervention that he thought that political parties are elected to the Government to represent the electorate in the House of Commons? Individuals, of course, are elected to the House of Commons. Individuals might stand for election and raise their election funds under a party label, but the electorate vote for individuals in elections. We sit in the House of Commons as individuals, and it is as individuals that we represent our constituents. We do not elect a party apparatus to Government--we elect individuals.

Mr. Garnier: My hon. Friend has made a very telling point, and he made it very well. It is not surprising that the Labour party is the recipient of a huge amount of trade union funds because the trade unions buy policy. The trade unions buy up the Labour party--it is as simple as that. The trade unions attempted between 1974 and 1979

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to buy up that Labour Government, and no doubt they are intending and hoping to buy up a future Labour Government. That was the point made by my hon. Friend, and it is a legitimate point, about which the public should continually be reminded.

I am glad that this debate is providing us with an opportunity to remind the public what the Labour party is about--not only through the mechanics of this Bill but through their general philosophy of action, which is to buy up blocks of influence in any way possible to determine the country's future. Individuals and interest groups in this country would be well advised to bear in mind the rather nasty nature of the Labour party that hides behind the smile of its current leader. That lesson will no doubt be learnt more clearly in the next year as the Labour party begins to unravel and to distract itself by its own divisions.

The Home Affairs Select Committee went on to discuss the threshold at which disclosure ought to be made, assuming that it should be made. It was common ground, apparently, that

"small donors had a right to privacy because no-one could allege that their gift had been made with any ulterior purpose."

I query that, to the extent that many members of trade unions individually make small donations by way of the political levy which go into a much larger pot, which hammers on to the side of the directing mind, if that is the right expression, of the Labour party.

Mr. Cox: I do not know what the hon. and learned Member knows about the trade union movement, but he referred to the political levy. Is he aware that, under trade union legislation, all trade unionists have to ballot whether they wish to contribute to the political levy of a political party? Does the hon. and learned Gentleman know that?

Mr. Garnier: I not only knew that, but the hon. Gentleman missed the point that I was making--that many people make small donations. It was common ground in the Home Affairs Select Committee that those who make small donations should not be interfered with because the size of their donation could have no real bearing upon the management and policy making of the party to which they were making donations. The point I was making, and I shall say it again slowly so the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox) can take it in [Interruption.]--

Mr. Cox: You are not in court now.

Mr. Garnier: The small donations that are brought into an agglomeration through the political levy of the trade union system, once agglomerated, create a huge power of influence. That financial influence is applied to the Labour party to get it to produce policies and go in a direction that is sympathetic to the desires of the membership of the trade union. That is the point, and if it embarrasses the Labour party, so be it.

The evidence given by the parties to the Home Affairs Select Committee on the question of threshold relates directly to the issue of source and amount in clause 1. The Committee noted that, at

"the top end of the scale, the Green Party proposed that the names of individuals giving over £50,000 per annum (and the names of all organisations giving gifts) should be disclosed; the SNP suggested that all donations above £20,000 should be published in a party's accounts"--

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a Professor Harrison proposed £10,000--

"the Labour Party suggested various figures between £10,000 and £1,000 for individual donors, though, according to Mr. Whitty--

then general secretary of the Labour party--

"revealing donations of around £150 'would not cause us great difficulty'.; the Liberal Democrats proposed £5,000 as a figure which might be acceptable to other parties, though they were also prepared to reveal donors down to a much lower level; the TUC favoured donations of over £1,000 by individuals and £200 by companies being disclosed".

The Transport and General Workers Union argued for disclosure above

"'say £500 or £1,000'."

The Committee also noted:

"Among those who favoured a disclosure limit but did not mention a particular amount were the SDLP"--

is that the Northern Irish party?

Mr. Jenkin: Yes.

Mr. Garnier: --and

"Charter 88 and the Charter Movement."

The Institute of Public Policy Research, which I believe is a body sympathetic to the Labour party, suggested that

"'5 or 6 figure' sums were of considerable importance to the United Kingdom's relatively impoverished political parties."

The witnesses were asked whether as low a threshold for disclosure as just over £150 would be acceptable, and both the officials from the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties emphasised that there would be, as the general secretary of the Labour party, Mr. Whitty, said

"'a lot of bureaucratic hassle' in doing so."

It may be that the philosophy behind the figure of £1,000 mentioned in the Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Warley, West has nothing to do with the wider principle of disclosure, about which we obviously disagree, but is simply one of administrative convenience.

Anything below £150 or £500--take whatever figure one likes--would grossly inconvenience individual members of the Labour party because it is likely, according to the historic nature of the Labour party's membership, that individual donations from Labour party members would come at the lower end of the scale, whereas those at the higher end of the scale would be likely to be given, again according to historical evidence, by members of the Conservative party. A nasty little piece of party political discrimination, dressed up as a matter of high principle, is coming in under the fence.

A number of issues concern us. Questions of privacy are involved, as I mentioned earlier, as are questions of administrative practicality. The more donors that a party will be required to list, the more cumbersome the procedure will become. Eighteen months ago, the Home Affairs Select Committee learned that, in the United States--where funding is principally directed to individual candidates rather than to political parties--the candidates must register the name, address and occupation of all people who donate more than $200 to them.

The inquirer at the Federal Election Commission can obtain a computer print-out that lists, for example, all female physicians in Florida who donated more than $200 to candidate X. A considerable bureaucracy is involved, even if the system is based on the citizen's right to know--which I think is the principle that, at best, the hon.

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Member for Warley, West was trying to use in support of his case. The hon. Gentleman cannot get much comfort from what occurs in Germany, because parties there need reveal details only of donors who contribute more than DM20,000 in a year.

The thrust of the hon. Gentleman's Bill has to be borne in mind because we are not talking about a two-party Conservative-Labour system--there are a number of small parties, some of which he and I might tolerate and some of which he and I would jointly abhor. For a small regional party, a donation of £1,000 might be a substantial sum and have some significance locally, but given that small parties do not have much influence by and large it would have no significance nationally. Therefore, a £1,000 donation would have no bearing on the movement of the constitution.

In the case of the larger political parties, a £1,000 donation might be welcome, but it will not exactly move the ship. British Airways withdrew its donation when it was cross with the Conservative Government for not doing what it thought was in its interests. That had absolutely no effect on the Conservative party--I do not know how much money British Airways used to donate, but it would have been more than £1,000. That is an example of how a huge donation to a political party--contrary to what the hon. Gentleman might suspect--has absolutely no influence on its philosophy, policies and direction.

Another example is the Duke of Westminster. The hon. Gentleman may remember the Housing and Urban Development Bill of 1993, which was renamed the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Bill. Now that it is safely into law, I can say that it is the nearest thing to theft that I have seen pass through the House. I was a new Member of the House in those days and I thought that what we did was always wonderful. The Duke of Westminster withdrew his support from the Conservative party because he believed that the Bill was antipathetic to his property interests--and he was quite right. His threat of removing his donation from the Conservative party had no bearing on the passage of the Bill through Parliament. However, he decided to vote against it or to abstain.

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