Lord Monks (Lab)

I will not be specific about it because I do not want to generally insult people, but over the years, there has been some dodgy funding of the Conservative Party. Maybe something has been done about it; maybe it has not. The noble Lord will tell us in a moment, I am sure. I will say something about the amount of money we are talking about, which the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, touched on. In 2016, when I was much more au fait with this debate than I probably am today, the contribution that the union member made to the Labour Party was not much more than the price of a pint of beer. It has gone up a little bit if it is 10 quid now, but it was a modest amount. Comparisons with financial services, as the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, has made, are wrong, because the sums of money we are talking about there are much greater, and refunds, and all the rest of it. The kind of administrative fee that would be required for that amount of donation seems ridiculous. On this side, we very much see this as an attempt to restore some Labour Party funding streams. I do, anyway—I will not speak for the Front Bench. I think it is important that the Labour Party gets the funding that it requires. I believe that going back to 1945, 1946 and so on is the right way to go, so I support the Government and the Bill.