Meeting of the Parliament 03 May 2023
No—I am afraid that I have only four minutes.
With 74,000 members, the SNP is clearly well ahead of both those parties. As a percentage of the relevant electorate, SNP membership is about 1.7 per cent, Labour is at 0.9 per cent and the Conservatives are at 0.4 per cent. It is pretty clear which party has the most members, is the most popular with the public and wins the most elections.
Transparency about budgets is a serious point: I am not quite clear what practical differences the Conservatives want. For example, both the SNP and the Greens have been open and clear that, if we want better public services, we need to consider raising taxes. By contrast, the Conservatives have called for lower taxes but simultaneously asked for extra spending on a range of areas. That is neither honest nor transparent—in fact, it is impossible. The Tories might set an example in transparency by saying where they would cut public services to match tax cuts.
When it comes to transparency in political parties, we could do no worse than look at the House of Lords. As members know, the SNP does not take seats there because the lords are unelected, which is an affront to democracy. Britain cannot be considered a true democracy as long as one half of its Parliament is appointed and not elected.
How do those people get appointed? Some may be there on merit but, for others, it seems that they just pay money to the Conservative Party. I understand that about £3 million is the going rate. We are told that 15 of the past 16 Conservative Party treasurers have been offered a seat in the House of Lords, having each donated more than £3 million to the party.
It is not only party treasurers; it has been reported that, since 2010, 22 of the Tories’ main financial backers have been given peerages, having donated at least £54 million to the party. Other nominations have been blocked by the House of Lords Appointments Commission; it tried to block Peter Cruddas in 2020, but Boris Johnson overruled it and Peter Cruddas got his peerage.
OpenDemocracy and Brunel University London have said that the chances of
“so many ... Tory donors ... ending up in the ... Lords is equivalent to entering the National Lottery 12 times in a row—and winning the jackpot every time.”
To be clear, it is illegal to sell titles for money, but that rule has been enforced only once—in 1933.
I mention in passing that Labour seeks the right of recall for MSPs. We should not forget that, although Labour’s Mike Watson had to resign after he got a 16-month sentence for trying to set fire to a hotel, he still sits as a Labour member in the House of Lords. Maybe Labour should clean up its own act first.