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The Second Deputy Chairman: Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that we are dealing only with amendment No. 4. Amendment No. 5 will be considered in a separate debate.
Mr. Linton: Thank you, Mr. Lord. I have finished my remarks on amendment No. 4.
Mr. Douglas Hogg (Sleaford and North Hykeham): Rather surprisingly, I find myself in agreement with the
hon. Gentleman, for two reasons. The first is his rather frivolous point that the parties to which the amendment refers, albeit obliquely, are much in need of policy development. The second is more substantive--I do not agree with my Front Benchers on this, and have not done so for years--and concerns the Oath.10.15 pm
I do not myself believe that the Oath in its present form should be used as the defining test for anything. It does not fully or properly reflect the obligations that we as Members of Parliament owe to the House of Commons or to the country. The time is coming when we should reassess the nature of the Oath so that it does fully and properly reflect those obligations. It does not at the moment, and therefore I do not wish to see it used as a precondition for the making available of public moneys.
Mr. Stunell:
The amendment is interesting and it challenges the Committee to consider the deeper issues. We believe that there should be easier and less controversial routes into the House for those who have been legitimately elected by their constituents. However, I am not persuaded that the amendment should be used to prosecute that point of view. The matter should be dealt with by changing the basis of the legislation concerning the entrance of Members to the House.
The essence of the Neill committee's report on the issue was not about state funding for political parties, as the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Linton) sought to persuade us, but about support for political parties in the House in their policy development work of testing legislation and bringing forward alternatives. The committee did not propose more widespread support for political parties in general with their policy development. The hon. Gentleman was a little over-generous in his interpretation of the Neill committee's recommendations, and the opportunity he seeks to take to change the basis of qualification for the use of facilities in the House--while I am sympathetic to it in principle--is probably out of place in the Bill. I shall be interested to hear the Minister's comments on the amendment, because there is a wider issue to do with the eligibility of elected Members to take their places in the House; but the amendment is not the way to secure change.
Mr. Tipping:
As my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Linton) said, amendment No. 4 would allow any party to which two or more Members of the House of Commons belonged to be allocated a policy development grant, irrespective of whether those Members had taken the Oath or were disqualified from sitting. My hon. Friend rightly pointed out that the beneficiary of the amendment would be Sinn Fein.
The right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) commented on the wider issue of the Oath, but I am inclined to agree with the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) that the wider issues should be debated at another time. I listened carefully to my hon. Friend's arguments, but I do not share his view that the Neill committee advocated universal state funding. Some funding will be available under the Bill, but it will be provided for political parties that operate in the House of Commons.
Mr. Hogg:
Why has the Minister fixed the threshold at two Members? As he knows, there is one party that is
Mr. Tipping:
There is not an awful lot of difference between one Member and two Members. [Hon. Members: "100 per cent."] They may make up in quality what they lack in quantity. The right hon. and learned Gentleman asks why we chose two Members. My recollection is that it was because we use that benchmark for allocating Short money. I do not think that the issue amounts to a great deal.
What is important is that the Neill committee recommended that policy development funding should be available for parties working in the House of Commons. It took the view that the day-to-day hurly-burly of the political agenda prevented House of Commons parties from developing long-term policies that they could include in their manifesto and put to the voters.
Mr. Hogg:
Would the hon. Gentleman confirm my belief that the Labour party was first represented by a single person in the House?
Mr. Tipping:
The right hon. and learned Gentleman should look at the party's progress since then. I am constantly told that the majority party--the Labour party, in this case--has been extremely generous to the Opposition parties when it comes to Short money. That is a direct result of the efforts of the shadow Leader of the House; he pushed long and hard for that to happen, and achieved a good result.
If we argue that money should be available for policy development for parties which are mainstream and take part in the House of Commons, it must apply only to those parties that are represented here. That is how we have arrived at our position. I hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea says about the need for Sinn Fein to develop its policies. In a sense, it is in the hands of Sinn Fein to resolve this matter. I hope that my hon. Friend will reflect on that.
Mr. Tony Benn (Chesterfield):
I saw the debate on the television set upstairs, and was drawn down by the arguments that I heard, so I ask the Minister to forgive me. I have two difficulties with his argument. One is that the House should decide the political faith of people who seek to be represented. I am a republican, and I have to tell a lie to sit in Parliament. I greatly resent having to pretend that I am a monarchist in order to vote. Now that proceedings are televised, I have a little video clip of the words that I used. I said, "As a dedicated republican, and under protest, and solely to serve my constituents, I use the words of the Parliamentary Oaths Act 1866", and then I had to repeat the words of the Oath. It is offensive that no Member of Parliament who believes that his electors should have the right to elect a head of state is allowed to sit in Parliament.
Secondly, the Oath is meaningless. A Privy Councillor takes a worse oath than the Oath of Allegiance. He has to swear to protect the Crown from foreign prelates, potentates and powers. If, by any chance, a Privy Councillor becomes a Commissioner in Brussels, he takes
another oath that he will take no notice whatever of any national Government. So Privy Councillors who go to Brussels, such as Neil Kinnock, Leon Brittan or Ivor Richard, break their oath in order to sit there.
There is no oath in Brussels; there is no oath in the Northern Ireland Assembly that was. Nobody said that Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness could not be Ministers there without taking an oath. It is nonsense; it has nothing to do with the wider question of whether they should come here. I have talked to them, and they do not want to come here. They were elected on the basis that they would not. However, they are denied the facilities, and now we are told that other facilities, namely public funding--
The Second Deputy Chairman:
Order. Before the right hon. Gentleman goes too wide of the mark, I remind him that the amendment is specifically about policy development grants.
Mr. Benn:
In addition to being denied salary and expenses, they are denied the facilities, and they are now to be denied the money to develop their policies in a way that is relevant. So the House of Commons determines who is to serve in Parliament. That is wholly undemocratic. I can imagine the central committee of the Communist party saying, "You can stand for the Supreme Soviet, so long as you believe in the class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat." If that had happened, we would all have gathered to denounce it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Linton) is a moderate man who has made a passionate speech, but his passion has been quietened by the Minister's reply, so I cannot go into the Division Lobby on this point.
Mr. Hogg:
You could divide us.
Mr. Benn:
One Member is not enough, as the right hon. Gentleman has just proved.
If one represents a point of view, and is a member of a party that has a couple of Members of Parliament, why on earth should one not enjoy the same rights as anyone else? It is the same as saying that they should not be allowed free distribution of envelopes in an election because they had not taken the Oath. The principle under discussion is wholly offensive, and I apologise for having come in so late to make that argument.
Mr. Linton:
When I became the Member for Battersea, I never expected to be part of a troika involving my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) and the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg). If we three are the only ones on the right side of the argument, that does not devalue the argument one bit.
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