Phil Brickell

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Harris. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell) for leading this important debate. I rise to speak on behalf of the 177 people in Bolton West who signed the petition. Before I came to this place I dedicated more than a decade of my career to tackling bribery and corruption in all its forms across the UK, India, the UAE and the US, so I have a professional imperative to speak out on cleaning up our politics, as well as a moral one. That is why I have been campaigning on the issue week in, week out since I was elected to this place in July of last year. I was pleased to attend the launch of Transparency International’s “Checks and Balances” report in the autumn of last year, along with the anti-corruption champion, Baroness Margaret Hodge. Having pored over the petition data in granular detail, I know that this is one of the rare issues that cuts across north and south, blue and red, and urban and rural. We all want our politics to be clean and fair so that it can deliver the very best outcomes for our constituents. For me, that is the heart of the issue that we are discussing. Our democracy relies heavily on donations to provide funding for parties and candidates to engage with the electorate. However, recent scandals across all major parties involving donations being linked to criminal, unknown or potentially malign foreign sources have led to some of the lowest levels of public trust that we have ever seen. Only 12% of people trust political parties, and there is a corrosive view that politicians are all in it for themselves. The issue has become so severe that I argue that the very integrity of our political system is under serious threat. Our constituents will not cast their votes if they do not believe that their vote makes a difference. Without voting, of course, they lose their stake in our politics. Who can blame them? For far too long, successive Governments have failed to act on political finance reform, leaving our system vulnerable to exploitation by those who seek to subvert our much-cherished democracy. I recently had the pleasure of meeting the Electoral Commission, which has warned that significant loopholes in our political finance laws allow money of unknown origin, and potentially foreign influence, to infiltrate British politics. Independent scrutiny bodies, including the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament and the Committee on Standards in Public Life, have repeatedly warned about the risks posed by opaque political donations. That is why we desperately need what I hope will be a forthcoming elections Bill. I urge the Minister, in her response, to provide a clear timeline for that piece of legislation. We desperately need to close loopholes, empower regulators and protect our democratic institutions from foreign influence.