Jonathan Djanogly, MP for Huntingdon and Shadow Solicitor General, on the need to tackle trade union barons.
The debate on how political parties are financed has reignited in recent months following the ‘cash for honours’ scandal, the admission of law-breaking by Labour Party through dodgy donations and ongoing irregularities over cash accepted during Labour’s internal elections.
Within months of becoming leader, David Cameron backed a comprehensive set of radical proposals to clean up the way that parties fund themselves. The fact that these bold ideas did not get greater coverage in the media was largely due to the fact that its launch was trumped by Labour’s Lord Levy and the cash for honours scandal. It was that scandal which forced Tony Blair into creating inter-party talks, chaired by Sir Hayden Phillips.
These talks broke down in October 2007 because Labour were unable or unwilling to countenance any meaningful reform of the trade unions’ control of Labour’s finances. In the Conservative Party’s view, there is no point in any reform which leaves the unions running the Labour Party by pulling their financial strings. Labour have sought to prevent the public from focusing on this by suggesting that the Conservative commitment to reform had weakened. This is nonsense.
As the unpublished minutes show, the talks were scuppered by the refusal of the Labour representatives, Peter Watt and Jack Straw, to discuss a cap on donations which would fully include the trade unions. (It is worth noting that Peter Watt showed a detailed and extensive knowledge of party funding law during the talks, which strangely has now left him).
Whilst those Talks have ended, a great deal of work was undertaken behind the scenes by Ministry of Justice civil servants seconded to Sir Hayden. For the first time since the 1980s, there was a thorough analysis of how trade unions bankroll the Labour Party - in return for policy favours and taxpayer funding from the Labour Government. It is no surprise that Ministers have again and again refused to make this evidence public.
Recent Comments