| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I must bring the hon. Gentleman to order. I am sure that he intends to move on to the allocation of time motion soon.
Mr. Salmond: I am talking about the allocation of time, and the time that the Home Secretary requires to recover his sense of political judgment, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was merely going to say that the hon. Member for West Ham told me that Alastair Campbell had been on the phone to him. I suspect that that must be why the Home Secretary is absent from our proceedings now--Alastair Campbell is telling him off for announcing such a policy on the day of the launch of the Scottish by-elections.
The substantive reason why the guillotine motion should be rejected is that the Home Secretary sought to give the impression in his introduction that the Bill is uncontroversial and that the 666 amendments are uncontroversial and do not deal with points of substance.
Mr. Salmond: The Home Secretary tried to give that impression. That is my clear understanding of what he had to say. The Bill started off as a measure that commanded support across the parties--there was remarkable consensus, as there was on the Neill committee--but it no longer commands that consensus. The Home Secretary was kind enough to remind the House that my party and I have long favoured statutory disclosure of donations, statutory provisions on campaign finance and a statutory limit not only on campaign expenditure but on donations, which is absent from the Bill.
We have long believed in all those measures, but we now find ourselves totally opposed to a part of the Bill that contains the most extraordinary anomaly that I can think of in any Bill of recent times. It is a sign of the extent to which Ministers are distant from the reality of that loss of consensus that when I raised the matter with the Home Secretary, rather than realising that I was talking about the Northern Ireland exemption in part IV of the Bill, the right hon. Gentleman thought that I was talking about chapter IV, which deals with referendums.
The Home Secretary does not understand the anxieties of the Scottish National party, which sees that, as a result of the Bill, an expatriate Irish person will be allowed to give money to a political party that has been associated with violence for a generation or more, whereas an
expatriate Scot will not be allowed to give money to the SNP, which has espoused a peaceful, constitutional road to change for 70 years. If the Home Secretary does not realise that that is grossly offensive to many people of all political parties in Scotland, as well as in Northern Ireland and Wales, and that it is a source of major political controversy in the Bill, and if he justifies the guillotine on the basis of an all-party consensus that no longer exists, I seriously doubt his judgment.
Mr. William Ross (East Londonderry): Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate that it is not merely an expatriate Irishman who can send money back? Someone who is expatriate four or five generations down the line, who still calls himself an Irish American or an Irish Australian can do so.
Mr. Salmond: I was interested when the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland quoted the late president of the Ulster Unionist party, who was on to a strong point when he seemed to argue--I have checked the evidence of the Neill committee--that it would inconvenience the UUP, which is a peaceful and democratic party, to turn down donations from expatriate supporters, and wanted that provision to be universally applied. Legislation to stop such donations will not inconvenience the men of violence. The last thing that people who engage in violent activities will be concerned about is what is in a Bill in this House. They are already pursuing illegal activities; they will not be legalised by a House of Commons measure.
The provision will substantially inconvenience democratic and peaceful political parties. That is the anomaly on which the Government are riding in part IV of the legislation. Furthermore, a Northern Ireland Minister--apparently in all innocence--could not cite with any certainty the views of the Northern Ireland parties on that section of the Bill. That should tell the House that the Bill is not in a condition to be guillotined. Indeed, it is not in a condition to be enacted.
What would happen if the guillotine failed and the measure were lost? We read in the Evening Standard today that the Government are considering an April, as opposed to a May, election. Are they saying that they intend to invoke the full provisions of the Bill before an election in the spring of next year? Or are they suggesting that they will be invoked for the following election? If it is the election after next--I suspect that it is and, judging from the detail of the Bill, one must conclude that it is bound to be--why not carry the Bill on to the next Session and regain the all-party consensus with which the Government started the process but which they have lost, as is well understood from the debates in another place?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Mike O'Brien): On a point of information, we have made it clear that we hope that some, although not all, of the key provisions of the Bill will come into effect--depending on what is decided today--on 16 February 2001. The time scale that the hon. Gentleman is discussing is obviously important. It is important that the Electoral Commission should be able to get on with its job.
Mr. Salmond: I thank the Minister. That makes the point. If the provisions are to be implemented in
mid-February, it is an open invitation to rush through whatever needs to be rushed through on political parties before a campaign that could start as early as next March. If the Bill is primarily aimed at general elections and fairness, it should be introduced for the following election, when its provisions can be properly understood and implemented.As it stands, the Bill is certainly discriminatory and unfair. I believe that it is undemocratic. It may also be unlawful and may have to be tested elsewhere. Rather than turn down the arguments against the guillotine, the Government would be well advised to think again about the discriminatory aspects of part IV.
6.59 pm
Dr. Julian Lewis (New Forest, East): This is the first time that I have spoken on a guillotine motion. It is also the first time that I have spoken in the Chamber since you were appointed to your present post, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I sincerely congratulate you. I hope that you will indulge me slightly if I speak not about the general principle of guillotining but about why I am sad that this Bill will be guillotined. I am sure that you will correct me if I stray into too much detail. I shall try to avoid doing so.
I moved in Committee and on Report in this House an amendment on which some of the Lords amendments have a bearing. My amendment related to a provision in the Representation of the People Act 1983 that makes it a criminal offence deliberately to tell lies about the character and conduct of a candidate for an election with a view to damaging his or her vote in that election.
As I explained at the time--I shall not do so in any detail now--I was the victim of deliberate lies and someone was criminally convicted on seven charges for making gross, lying accusations about my private life and my sexuality. Even to this day, I believe that they damaged at least one relationship that was particularly important to me. More relevantly to the Bill, which will be guillotined, the accusations remained in circulation throughout the election campaign because they were on the internet. Indeed, they remained in circulation on the internet even after the perpetrator had been convicted, having admitted in court that he had no evidence for the lies, and even after he had died.
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I know that the hon. Gentleman sought my indulgence, and I think that he has had that. However, I must remind him that this is not a general debate about the Bill, but a debate about the timetable motion. I ask him to return to that subject.
Dr. Lewis: I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
It is a matter of great concern that a loophole that was identified in Committee and on Report will not be discussed because of the proposed guillotining of the Bill. The fact is that, in trying to close the loophole that enables such allegations to circulate even though their perpetrator is no longer alive, I had the support of the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Mr. Miller) from the Government Back Benches, and I received exceptionally kind consideration from the Minister of State, Home
Office, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche), and the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, who I am delighted is here now.When referring to the problem on Report, the Under- Secretary said:
- The Government note the broad support on both sides of the House for dealing with this issue, and the strong sympathy that exists for the proposition made, on this occasion, by the hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis).--[Official Report, 14 March 2000; Vol. 346, c. 263-4.]
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |