Contribution
My Lords, I support the amendments and congratulate the speakers today—in particular, the noble Lord, Lord Burns. I recall the debate some 10 years ago. I declare—although it has been declared for me—that I am senior treasurer of the Conservative Party and have been so for very many years.
The last time we had this debate, it was, shall we say, feisty. I was intervened on 12 times in one speech, which might be a bit of a record. It was a constructive debate, and I believe a solution was agreed. The noble Lord, Lord Monks, says it is a get out of jail for the unions. We wanted more and for it not just to be new members—we wanted it to be existing members—but a compromise was agreed that everybody felt was fair. I hope that in the spirit of this debate, the noble Lord, Lord Monks, reflects on his remarks and finds an opportunity to withdraw any suggestion that there is anything dodgy or not clear about political donations to our party—I would not make the same allegations about his party—because it is not the case. There is strict legislation on declaring donations and we are very careful to abide by it.
The world is an upside-down sort of world, is it not? In actual fact, the single largest donation to the Labour Party is not from unions—it is from an individual person who came to this country, made a lot of money and chose personally to give a large sum of money to the Labour Party. Good luck to him. To echo the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, we should commend and thank those people who wish to contribute politically to this country in whatever form they choose to do so, either going up and down streets waving leaflets and delivering them or choosing to give financially. Such people are good citizens to whom we owe a debt of gratitude.
The other upside-down world, of course, is the comment made by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, about shareholders. Public companies have an opt-in system. Every year, not every 10 years, shareholders have to vote for donations to be made to a political party if their company wishes to do it. So there is an opt-in for public companies, not that many public companies make donations to any political party—although I noticed in today’s submissions to the Electoral Commission that companies have chosen to give to the Labour Party, and good luck to them.
The history lesson that we have had is appropriate and relevant, because there is an element of toing and froing. The Burns report highlighted problems that had been in existence before the 2016 Act. It is worth reminding ourselves of those problems, because one would not want to see them again.
The Burns committee was told that the deal that existed between the Thatcher Government and the TUC had not been fulfilled, and that too many unions had failed to ensure that all union members were always aware of the fact that they did not need to contribute to the political fund. The then Government submitted written evidence that added that
“many unions that have a political fund are not transparent with members on their membership subscription forms about the existence of a political fund”,
and that
“their choice to opt-out of contributing to the fund; or the level of the member’s contribution towards the fund”
was not made clear. It stated that, of the 25 unions that had political funds in those days, 12 did not mention, on the subscription form,
“the existence of a political fund. Of the 11 unions that do reference a political fund … 5 do not make it clear that a member has a choice to opt-out”.
That was then, and that is not a situation that anyone, I think, would want to see come back—but there is a danger of that with this legislation.