§ Mr. Peter Thurnham (Bolton, North-East)I am delighted to have been called, as I was uncertain that my debate would be reached. When I checked on the progress of the debate last night, I was told that it had only a small chance of being reached by 9 am, when the debate ends, so I was surprised to find that I was to be called earlier. I had imagined that the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Griffiths) would not be up quite so early, as I know that the Scots oppose the early introduction of double summer time. I thought that the hon. Gentleman would at least ensure that his hon. Friends allowed him to stay in bed a little longer. I had some difficulty in getting my application for the ballot in by 9 o'clock on Monday, and I am indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Neale) who got my name into the office in time.
I have chosen this subject because I believe that most of the public are ignorant of the fact that more than £1 million was given to the Opposition parties to enable them to conduct their opposition. The history of that goes back a little. The Library has given me a note of the development of the various Acts which have brought the present system about. They go back to 1937, when the Leader of the Opposition was first granted a salary to help him in his job. In 1975, we had the granting of Short money, followed by the Houghton committee report in 1976 and a Hansard Society commission report in 1981, both of which came down in favour of helping active political parties as an essential part of a healthy democracy. I think that we would all agree with that, in the light of developments in eastern Europe.
The money is paid on condition that it is used exclusively in relation to parliamentary business. I wish to clarify whether the money is being used for that purpose, in view of some of the failures of the Opposition parties to conduct themselves in a proper democratic fashion. In 1975, when the Short moneys were introduced, we had a responsible Opposition, who I am sure would not have condoned some of the practices that we have now. We have a list of Labour Members who signed a declaration, published on 19 January, that they would refuse to pay the community charge. As it is taxpayers' money that is funding the Short moneys, I question whether it is right for the Labour party to continue to include among its whipped Members those who refuse to pay a legitimately raised tax. Why should people pay tax for others who refuse to pay it although they are clearly able to do so? It is for purely political purposes that they refuse to pay—purposes which go beyond the political process.
The declaration that the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist) issued on 19 January 1990 says:
Labour MPs are linking up with the only force which can defeat the legislation—the mass action of millions of ordinary people involved in the Non-Payment Campaign organised into the All Britain Federation, which will become a mighty force in the coming weeks.Is that parliamentary action or unparliamentary action by the official Opposition party—financed by the taxpayer?I call on you, Mr. Speaker, to find a way in which payment of these moneys—I understand that payments are made monthly—can be suspended while that party 434 condones such action. Why does not the official Opposition leadership condemn it and throw out the Members who signed the declaration?
The press release issued on 19 January makes the intriguing statement that "nearly 30 Labour MPs" have given their backing to the action. I have tried to check exactly who has given this backing. On the papers that I have been given, there are 29 names. I think that 28 people signed up on 19 January but that a list published by The Daily Telegraph on 9 March contains an additional name.
To clarify the situation, I should like to put the names on the record. The hon. Member for Coventry, South-East included the names of the following Members: the hon. Member for Liverpool, Broadgreen (Mr. Fields); the hon. Member for Falkirk, West (Mr. Canavan), against whom there are currently legal proceedings, which in themselves, I should have thought, were grounds for immediate withdrawal of the official Opposition Whip; the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston (Mr. Loyden)—
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not dealing with cases that are sub judice.
§ Mr. ThurnhamThat is the only sub judice case of which I am aware. There is no such impediment in the other cases—at any rate, not at this stage.
The list includes also the hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon); the hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Wray); the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) who, of all those Members, I should have thought would want to obey the parliamentary process—
§ Mr. Bruce Grocott (The Wrekin)On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. What has this to do with the financial aid given to Opposition parties? I have looked in the Library, just as the hon. Gentleman has done, but I can see no reference to any material of this sort. The hon. Gentleman seems to be getting very wide of the subject of debate.
§ Mr. SpeakerThe hon. Gentleman has just started and is outlining his case. However, he must not deal with matters that are sub judice.
§ Mr. ThurnhamLet me make the position absolutely clear. The note that I have received from the Library says that, if the Accounting Officer has any reasonable doubt about the validity of any claim for official money, he should refer the matter to Mr. Speaker. The purpose of this debate is to establish whether there is some ground for an investigation by the Accounting Officer into whether any of the official money being paid to the official Opposition party is in any way leading to unparliamentary activity. If there is any doubt, either the Leader of the Opposition must withdraw the Whip from the 29 Members or the Short money should be suspended. Why should taxpayers pay nearly £1 million a year to help the official Opposition to oppose in a parliamentary fashion, when that Opposition clearly condone unparliamentary activity by allowing those 29 Members to continue?
I will resume my reading of the list. The right hon. Member for Chesterfield—
§ Mr. GrocottWill the hon. Gentleman develop his argument a little and tell us what he thinks should be done about taxpayers' money which goes to the governing party, one of whose members has been suspended from this House?
§ Mr. ThurnhamWe are debating Short money. The point that the hon. Gentleman has raised is absolutely irrelevant. The hon. Gentleman questioned the relevance of what I was saying, but how can the right hon. Member for Chesterfield, of all people, condone something that is totally unparliamentary?
Then we have the hon. Member for Bristol, South (Ms. Primarolo) and the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), who is not here. However, he is one of the few people who has been consistent in the matter. If my recollection is correct, he voted against the payment of Short money when we last debated the subject two years ago.
Then we have the hon. Members for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden), for Bradford, North (Mr. Wall)—the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) seems to have been left behind—the hon. Members for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heller), for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) and for Tottenham (Mr. Grant).
Now we have the hon. Member for Bradford, South and the hon. Members for Bow and Poplar (Ms. Gordon), for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore), for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes), for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks), for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell), for Liverpool, Riverside (Mr. Parry), for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galloway), for Dunfermline, West (Mr. Douglas) and for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone). It sticks in my throat to call them honourable Members when they seek in an unparliamentary way to reverse legislation that has been passed by the House. Then there are the hon. Members for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms. Abbott), for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) and for Sunderland, North (Mr. Clay).
That is 28—not "nearly 30" as described in the press release. The hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion) gets me to 29—the nearly 30 names which were claimed. There may be another name that I have not yet had note of.
It is most unsatisfactory that the official Opposition should continue to allow those Members to take the Labour Whip. The Labour Whips' office is the principal beneficiary of the money that is provided, so it would surely be consistent to withdraw the Whip.
The hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist) said that there will be a national demonstration this weekend, so surely now is the time for the Opposition to make a decision on the matter. Certainly 29 Labour Members have put their names to the declaration and will be involved with the demonstration this weekend. The Opposition Front Bench spokesmen are clearly condoning unparliamentary activity and they must come to a decision. Either they must withdraw the Whip or ask you, Mr. Speaker, to suspend the payment of the Short money to them because they are clearly not carrying out their Opposition duties in a parliamentary fashion.
The hon. Member for Coventry, South-East said that that was the only force which would defeat the legislation, but it is not. The force that can defeat the legislation is a vote in Parliament, not a mass demonstration organised outside the House in an attempt to persuade people not to pay the tax, which only imposes a greater burden on other taxpayers.
Some people may feel that the Short money should not be paid anyway. Perhaps it should be an optional extra on the community charge. When people pay their community charge, they should be asked whether they want to opt in 436 to give the Opposition some money. Then we would know whether community charge payers wanted to encourage an Opposition who allow 29 or 30 of its members to say that they do not want to pay. We would then see exactly how much the British people want to pay towards Short money to assist the Opposition in carrying out their duties.
If the Opposition act in such an unparliamentary way, people will feel less inclined to opt into the extra payment on their community charge. I have not done the arithmetic, but payment of a few pence on the community charge would be voluntary. The Opposition would then find out how keen the British people were to pay the Short money to them, and unparliamentary activity would obviously work against them.
I ask you, Mr. Speaker, to consult your parliamentary Accounting Officer as to whether he is entirely satisfied that none of the money being paid is encouraging those 29 Members in their activities. As Members of the official Opposition, they are benefiting from the Short money. How can we condone such a situation?
I have a printout of newspaper articles from the Library, which quote many of the hon. Members whose names I have read out. I shall be pleased to provide this as evidence to the Accounting Officer, if he has any doubts. There is plenty of evidence here that Opposition Members are prepared to condone unparliamentary activity to reverse a parliamentary matter. It is most unsatisfactory that we should have had a great increase in the money paid at a time when the Opposition are failing to discipline their Members. The amount paid to the Labour party has doubled. According to the latest figures that I have found, in 1986 it was £440,000. in 1987 it was £436,000 and in 1988 it was £883,000, so the amount given to the Labour party to enable it to conduct its affairs in a parliamentary fashion has virtually doubled. What does the extra money do? It seems to encourage 10 per cent. of Labour Members to behave in a totally unparliamentary way.
If we cannot suspend the Short money altogether, perhaps it would be best to have a debate on whether it should be reduced to its previous level as a discipline on the Labour party, which seems quite unable to discipline its own members.
I thank you for the opportunity to raise this subject, Mr. Speaker, in a short debate at such an early hour this morning. I hope that it will encourage the Opposition Front Bench to think carefully about their position in the next few days before the weekend demonstration, and to discipline its members. If the Opposition cannot discipline their own members, I think that the House should discipline the Opposition.
§ Mr. Bruce Grocott (The Wrekin)When the hon. Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) reads his speech or watches it on the video, I do not think that he will be proud of it. The phrases that kept creeping in about disciplining Opposition parties would have tripped easily off the tongue of people usually associated with more totalitarian methods of ruling. Let us be crystal clear about the matter. If the income of whichever party is in opposition—I shall return to that point in a minute, because it is of particular interest, given the opinion polls today—were to depend on the whims of the Government majority, and on an assessment by Government Members 437 of whether the Opposition were worthy of the money, and if the subject could be raised in debate whenever the Government felt it was appropriate, it would be a dangerous constitutional precedent.
The power of the House is awesome. It can do anything by a majority vote. If the hon. Member wanted to use the effective electoral dictatorship which the majority has it could make the Labour party illegal. However, the House can operate only if the principles are observed and if there is no suggestion of the kind of attitude and principle—or rather lack of it—that the hon. Gentleman has displayed by his suggestion that the Labour party's money should depend on a daily assessment and on the jurisdiction of the majority party in the House.
I was about to say that the hon. Gentleman will be on the Opposition benches soon, viewing a party that he does not like in power. But he will not be with us when that occurs. Therefore, he has a certain freedom of speech on the subject, knowing that he will not be held accountable, although we shall ensure that some of his hon. Friends are held accountable, as soon as the happy day arrives when Government and Opposition are reversed.
I fully understand—I suspect that it will be exercising the minds of many of the hon. Gentleman's colleagues between now and the next general election—the importance of the rights of Opposition parties. That has been recognised over the years by those who have subjected these matters to serious debate. I make no apology for quoting Lord Prior—as he is now—although I have done so in the past. In July 1974, when his party was in opposition, he said:
Concerning additional cash for Opposition parties, I suppose that one of the benefits of the change in Government in recent years is that it has brought to the notice of Governments the very great difficulties from which Oppositions suffer, particularly Shadow Ministers…But certainly, as far as this proposal goes, I believe that Front Bench spokesmen, with the additional correspondence and additional research work that is now required of them— which is far greater than it was even a few years ago—do need the sort of assistance that the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned."—[Official Report, 29 July 1974; vol. 878, c. 33-4.]Anyone who honestly reviews our work over the past 16 years will know that that work load has greatly increased since 1974, and that, given all the pressures and demands on Opposition parties which were rightly referred to then, the case has become stronger and stronger.I might add that the money that Opposition parties have with which to deal with those pressures has not increased in anything like the same proportion as the money that we pay to keep the Prime Minister in office. The hon. Gentleman gave the Labour party's 1986 figure as £440,000 and the current figure as £883,000. I took the precaution of putting down a question about the cost of running the Prime Minister's office, which I thought might be relevant to the debate. I was told that in 1987 the cost was £5,418,455.
§ Mr. Greg Knight (Derby, North)So what?
§ Mr. GrocottI shall be pleased to hear the hon. Gentleman intervene after the next figure. I know that he is tired; he has probably been here for a long while. The duty of a Whip—
§ Mr. ThurnhamI have been listening carefully, but, although I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman 438 would want to begin his speech by condemning the action of the 29 hon. Members whom I mentioned, I have not heard a word about it. After all, we have come to hear him answer the points that I made. I am surprised that he has got so far without even mentioning that.
§ Mr. GrocottThe strange thing is that I am speaking to a subject put down by the hon. Gentleman, not me, entitled "Financial Assistance to Opposition parties". Had he wanted to discuss the poll tax, he could have put down a motion accordingly. Obviously he got up rather late this morning, grabbed the nearest set of notes, rushed into the Library and constructed the best job he could. I understand the problem; I also understand the hon. Gentleman's wish to interrupt my comments about the cost of running the Prime Minister's office. Lest he forget, the cost in 1987 was £5,418,455; the estimate for 1989 is £7,924,979. That is a 50 per cent. increase since the general election.
Last week the people of Mid-Staffordshire were able—among other things—to judge whether they had been obtaining value for money over that period, and I think that the answer was pretty conclusive. We will not take from the Conservative party—during the months in Government that remain to it—lectures about Opposition expenditure, when Government expenditure has increased on a vastly greater scale than ours. In any case, the Conservative party has support that is well out of our reach.
The Leader of the Opposition has a smallish office. Each of his shadow Secretaries of State has one researcher. That has to be compared with a Civil Service of over 500,000, which is what the Prime Minister has at her disposal. The disparity will become all too clear to Conservative Members before too long. Anyone who is concerned about democracy should be worried about the growing gap between the resources that are available to either side. When the positions are reversed, the hon. Member for Bolton, North-East will not find me, on that side of the House, arguing that the amount of money that is made available to the Opposition, however bad they may be, should be reduced.
The Government have increased massively the resources that are available to them. They have increased the amount of money that they spend on advertising their wares. There has been a sixfold increase in Government expenditure on advertising, particularly television advertising, since they came to power. In 1984, Department of Industry expenditure on television advertisements amounted to £32,000. In 1989, that amount had increased to £13 million. The Government's power has greatly increased since they took office. They use television advertisements to try to persuade the electorate of their advantages over the Opposition. The water privatisation advertisements were party political advertisements. They had nothing to do with Government administration. In the cold light of day, a few Ministers and Conservative Members must have felt some guilt over the way in which that money was spent.
The hon. Gentleman suggested that the taxpayer should be able to opt in and out on the question whether the Opposition should be given any money. The taxpayers in Mid-Staffordshire clearly opted out of wanting to give any more money to the Government. I have not checked the hon. Gentleman's voting record, but I wonder whether he would argue that shareholders should have the right to 439 opt out when payments are made on their behalf to political parties—always, of course, to the Conservative party.
I do not think that the hon. Gentleman will be thrilled with his speech when he reads it. It was recognised overwhelmingly by previous Parliaments that money should be made available to Opposition parties. In my view, not nearly enough money is made available to them. The disparity is growing and is becoming frightening. I have given the figures relating to the cost of running the Prime Minister's office.
With their parliamentary majority, the Government can take that money away from Opposition parties. If a kangaroo court consisting of Conservative Back Benchers ever said, "We do not like the way that that Member of Parliament is behaving; take away the Opposition's money," or, "We do not like the way that that shadow Minister is behaving; take away the Opposition's money," it would be a sad day for democracy. In fact, it would be a near-terminal day for democracy. This is an unnecessary and not very good subject for debate. I hope that no one will take it too seriously.
§ The Parliamentary under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Christopher Chope)In contrast to the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott), I have no hesitation in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) on scoring a bullseye in this short debate. He gave the Opposition an opportunity to comment on the actions of Labour Members, and the hon. Member for The Wrekin, their spokesman, declined to comment. Perhaps he does not have sufficient discretion or flexibility to do so.
I would have hoped that all Members of Her Majesty's loyal Opposition would have no hesitation in saying that they believe in loyalty to the sovereign and the rule of law. The rule of law is fundamental to a democratic society, but a number of Labour Members seem to saying that they wish to reject the rule of law—
§ Mr. Don Dixon (Jarrow)Get on with it.
§ Mr. ChopeI get the impression that the Opposition Whip wishes to interrupt, albeit from a sedentary position. Perhaps he would like to take this opportunity to condemn 440 his hon. Friends who are going round the country encouraging people not to pay the community charge, thereby imposing a higher burden on those who will pay, and at the same time saying that they themselves will not pay. What an appalling example to set.
§ Mr. ChopeClearly, the Opposition Whip must be as concerned about that as are others. The hon. Gentleman cannot take the medicine. Only when Opposition Members show themselves to be worthy upholders of the rule of law will they be taken seriously in the country. They have an opportunity now, at 7.25 am, to say unequivocally that all those Labour Members who say that they will not pay the community charge are wrong. I hope that not only words but actions will follow and that the Leader of the Opposition will say that, if they continue to encourage people not to pay the community charge and not to uphold the rule of law, they will be expelled from the Labour party.
§ Mr. GrocottWill the Minister be clear on one point, for his remarks are obviously more serious when uttered from the Dispatch Box than when said from the Back Benches? Is he saying, as a Member of the Government, that the Opposition's money should be dependent on his assessment—the Government's assessment—of how well they are doing their work?
§ Mr. ChopeI am not saying that. The Opposition's money is not their money but the taxpayers' money, and I should have thought that they were entitled to know whether the money that is going in their name to the Opposition is going to a responsible or irresponsible Opposition. That is the point that my hon. Friend raised in this debate.
It will be noted that in his intervention, the hon. Member for The Wrekin resolutely declined to criticise in any way the action of almost one seventh of parliamentary Labour party members, who have said that they are not prepared to pay the community charge, who are encouraging others not to pay it and who, in other words, are not prepared to uphold the rule of law. They are picking and choosing which laws they wish to obey. To do that is not democracy but anarchy.