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National Security Bill

To follow my noble friend to conclude from these Benches on this part of the Bill, I wish to commend the Minister for listening and taking back to the department a very strong view from this House that more needed to be done in this area. I also commend the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, for his persistence on this area. I respectfully disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley. Of course, we all know that there is a distinction between the small donors—those who give small sums of money either as a member or as a supporter of a political party: in my case, in my former constituency, there were all too small numbers of small donors, regrettably, but there were those who would bake a cake for a raffle—and individuals who give really quite enormous sums to political parties. On the one hand, I understand the argument that there should not be a distinction between the two groups, if someone is of wealth and means and they believe in the same thing as someone without wealth and means. However, as my noble friend indicated, with regret I share more the view of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, in this regard.

We would not be where we are in pursuing and being persistent with this issue if we did not know that the Electoral Commission was in effect asking us to do it. I have met the Electoral Commission frequently, and I do not think that it is relevant to highlight its resources when it has been very clear to us in saying that it does not have the powers to carry out what, ultimately, I believe it should be able to carry out—to ask political parties for due diligence as to the source of large donations. I hope that the government review will take us on that journey and provide an evidence base, on which I believe there will be a degree of consensus.

I thank the Government for their response and look forward to the review taking place, especially as it will start with the competent authorities that will have the information available to them. The Government are taking through the economic crime Bill, reforming and updating the mechanisms through unexplained wealth orders. It strikes me that that is a very good opportunity to look at some of the processes around UWOs, which are designed to be streamlined and not burdensome on authorities, to see whether they can be the model by which we would look at the requirements on political parties. On this issue, I have previously talked about the jarring position that, if a politically exposed person who is open to unexplained wealth order mechanisms, instead of giving to a political party used that money to buy a property, the relevant competent authorities would have to go through a process of due diligence for that property. However, as my noble friend said, on the concern about buying influence rather than buying a property, there is no mechanism that is open. I hope that that loophole will be closed. The Government have been clear in their guidance on the duties on the public and competent authorities to access data for unexplained wealth orders, so we should be in a better position.

Finally, as I said in the previous debate, this is likely to be the most expensive year coming up in British politics. I hope that we will have cleaner hands, but they will not be empty. Therefore, it is how we ensure that with the source of that money going into British

politics, especially in the lead-up to election campaigns, the transparency is not just around the donor but around where that money is from for substantial donations. I hope very much that we have started the process of rectifying this deficiency in the British system, and I thank the Minister for starting it.