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Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman should deal with the amendments. They have nothing to do with the criminal element in society; they concern political parties.
Mr. Ross: I appreciate what you are saying, Mr. Speaker, but there is a fine line. I think that "inextricably linked" is the term that is applied to Sinn Fein/IRA, so what is political and what is terrorism in that respect?
Rev. Martin Smyth (Belfast, South): Has my hon. Friend noticed that one hon. Member said that Sinn Fein had turned away from violence? Does he remember that when a bomb was apprehended in County Fermanagh, the local councillor said that the council was not in the process of condemnation?
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Members for East Londonderry (Mr. Ross) and for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth) are straying from the matters in hand. We are considering the Lords amendments.
Mr. Ross: I accept that, Mr. Speaker, but my hon. Friend has drawn attention to political links and to the political protection that Sinn Fein offers to the terrorist organisation to which it is inextricably linked. In those circumstances, the links are not just terrorist but political.
I have said enough about fuel smuggling and the amount of money that is lost through that. If the Minister thinks that it is a laughing matter, perhaps the Chancellor of the Exchequer will not. The Chancellor could do quite a lot with the £100 million, £200 million, or God knows how many hundreds of millions that have gone missing. However, the money is not really missing; someone has got it. I conclude my remarks on this issue, but we shall return to it time and again in other debates until we get a sensible answer or, more importantly, sensible action from the Government.
The Conservative party tabled amendment (a) in lieu of amendment No. 132, which would mean that the exemption will apply not to all Northern Ireland parties, but only to some of them. When the Minister moved the amendments, I thought that he was trying to tell us that all the parties would be covered. However, clause 65(2) says that a Northern Ireland party means:
- (a) a registered party of which one or more members are members of the Northern Ireland Assembly; or
(b) a registered party of which one or more members are Members of the House of Commons elected for constituencies in Northern Ireland.
The Minister mentioned the four-year period. However, as he well knows, that involves the pious hope that the provision will not be necessary at the end of four years.
In reality, at 11 or 12 o'clock one evening, an order will be introduced in the Chamber that will be accepted on the nod. The period will be extended for another four years, and then for another four years after that. It is an endless process. The arrangement will not end after four years. It is one of those temporary arrangements that tend to become permanent.The way out of the problem is to ring-fence the United Kingdom for the purposes of this part of the Bill. We should treat Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland as an accounting unit. Although I would not be prepared to go to court to stand by any figures that it produced--I do not trust it that far--we should try our best to make the financing of that party as transparent as possible so that we have an idea about where it and other parties get their money from. It would be interesting to find out whether other Governments are funding the parties. Many people in Northern Ireland would like to have a clear idea of where the various nationalist parties receive their money from. Above all, the real solution to the problem is to destroy terrorism, not to give in to it.
Mr. Stunell: This group contains about 60 amendments, and the majority of them do not relate to Northern Ireland. I hope that the House will not mind if I address my remarks to two other issues. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Mr. Öpik) had the opportunity to speak on Northern Ireland on this occasion, just as I know that he was delighted that I had the opportunity to speak about it on Report.
I draw the House's attention to amendment No. 39 and to several related amendments. The Minister will recall that, in the House and in Committee, I drew his attention to the grave difficulties that the Bill's original drafting had for the Liberal Democrats, as a federally organised and structured party.
I pointed out that in the form in which it then was, the Bill would have made it illegal for a political party to practise federalism. Although I accept that it is not popular to be federalist, for us that is a philosophical concept that we are keen to maintain. I acknowledge that, despite the bafflement of the Minister, the Committee and various civil servants at one time or another, my noble Friends at the other end of the building have worked with the Minister to produce sensible ways forward on the issue.
10.30 pm
I know that federalism is still misunderstood, but at least it is now not illegal for a political party. It will still be somewhat clumsy for us to operate, but as we made clear from the beginning, we are keen to implement the legislation fully and comprehensively and seek no special loopholes. All we sought was a structure that allowed us to practise our federal principles. I thank the Minister for moving some way to allow us to do that.
I shall comment on amendment No. 71 and the related amendments, which were the subject of the intervention by the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr. Walter). These amendments deal with the funding of the transitional arrangements, and the amount of money that could, should or might be made available for political parties to implement the changes.
The situation is complex. When the Bill left this place on its way to the House of Lords, £500,000 was the ceiling of the transitional amount available. In the other
place, that ceiling was raised to £700,000. We have before us three proposals, two from the Conservatives--one that the ceiling should revert to £500,000, and another that would reduce it to nil but allow access to an electronic register--and one from my right hon. and hon. Friends and me, which would raise the ceiling to £1 million. As far as I know, the Government still have on the table the sum of £700,000, so there are four figures--zero, £500,000, £700,000 or £1 million--as the possible ceiling for the transitional spending.The Liberal Democrat view is that implementing the Bill will entail significant transitional costs for all the mainstream political parties. The Bill is drawn in such a way that the money is not dished out willy-nilly. It is to be paid only against claims for actual spending, so it will be necessary for any political party to justify the sum that it is claiming against actual activity completed.
Why is transitional spending necessary? The first reason is that the Bill requires quick implementation. The Government want it in place for the general election, and the political parties are anxious to make sure that various loopholes are blocked. The provisions must be implemented carefully, as they entail many snags, difficulties and novelties for all the main political parties, which are essentially based on volunteer effort.
In Committee we spoke a good deal about the volunteer nature of politics; that applies as much to the Conservative and Labour parties as to the Liberal Democrats, and no doubt to others. We are not, on the whole, a professionalised and fully paid party. That is certainly the case at the constituency and branch level. We will need quick, careful implementation in hundreds of locations throughout the country by volunteers with different skills and qualifications. To ensure all that, we will require training and equipment, and careful deployment of resources.
If we had two years to implement the Bill, the transitional costs might be less, the training burden might be smaller and some equipment might be acquired as part of the normal replacement programme. However, that is clearly not the case, so we were keen for the House to consider the ceiling imposed by the Bill. We certainly agree with the increase that the House of Lords has introduced, and we have tabled an amendment that would place an even higher ceiling on the amount. Judging by events so far this evening, that amendment will not come to the attention of the House for a vote. However, I want to make it clear that we support the transitional arrangements and believe that they are an important and valuable way of ensuring that the Bill is implemented quickly, effectively and accurately throughout the United Kingdom.
Mr. Walter: We have had a serious debate about the Northern Ireland provisions, and latterly we have come on to other subjects that were dealt with in a point of order made by my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) earlier today when he said that the order of amendments is not always especially logical. Amendment No. 71, which I am sure we will come to vote on later, after amendment No. 70, must be debated now. In a moment, I shall sum up the position on the amendments affecting Northern Ireland, but I shall deal first with amendment No. 71 and the amendments in the names of my right hon. and hon. Friends.
I correct the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell), who said that our amendments would reduce the figure for assistance to zero. They would bring it down to £500,000, which was the Bill's original provision.
There is a serious point here. The Bill will require all political parties to verify that all donations over £200 come from permissible sources, and that will place a heavy burden on political parties. The Bill will require them to verify that the individual donor appears on an electoral register. That might sound simple enough, but it is not, because there are hundreds of electoral registers throughout the country which are handled by different electoral registration officers.
My party raised the issue with the Home Office in June when we wrote to ask what plans it had
- to provide parties both locally and nationally with a central, collated and up-to-date version of the electoral register.
We then realised that the Labour party had also written to the Home Office on the subject. It had received a reply dated 3 October, which is in the public domain and was copied to us. It said:
- The simplest solution would be some form of "on line" access so that parties and the Electoral Commission could check whether a donor was on a register when the donation was made.
- The aim would be to have such a system in place for next October--
I come now to our interesting debate on the amendments affecting Northern Ireland. In response to the Under-Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Mr. MacKay), in a moving speech, made the point that Northern Ireland political parties should be treated on an identical basis with parties in the rest of Great Britain. We had a key speech, particularly on the absence of Northern Ireland Ministers, from the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble), the leader of the Ulster Unionists, who went on to express his concerns about referendums.
The hon. Member for Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) gave a rather unacceptable justification for the separate treatment of Northern Ireland political parties. Then we had what I can only describe as a slightly amusing contribution from the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) about the anomalous position of expatriate Scots compared with the expatriate Irish, which he saw as discrimination, particularly against the Scottish National party, a matter which led him to threaten to take the Bill to the European Court of Human Rights because he felt that it was unjust. I look forward to that action.
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