It was quite right that the Conservative MPs caught up in the ‘Cash for Questions’ scandal of 1994 were forced to stand down as a result of having received payments to ask Parliamentary Questions on behalf of Mohammed Al-Fayed. Other Conservative MPs had already been exposed as being willing to receive payments to ask Questions. There is something subversive of democracy when MPs are able to be persuaded to support a policy or engage in partisan lobbying simply on the basis of having received financial inducements.
If an MP receiving payment for a Parliamentary service is considered to be corruption of the worst kind, then what would it mean for a Political Party, especially one looking to gain the power and influence of forming the UK Government, to receive large amounts of funding on the explicit understanding that they will introduce a particular policy at the demand of a donor? If Cash for Questions is so appalling, then what about Cash for Policies?
But that is exactly what is being considered at the CWU (Communication Workers Union) Annual Conference today. A motion has been submitted which will require the Labour NEC to add a definite commitment to renationalise Royal Mail in its 2015 election manifesto, and to move ahead with renationalisation in the first three years of a Labour Government. If the NEC will not submit to the demands of the CWU then union leader Billy Hayes has vowed to turn off the donation tap completely.
Billy Hayes says…
“We want a modern Royal Mail in full public ownership and able to deliver the universal service six days a week to all parts of the UK. We’ve had the full support of the Labour Party in that desire in the past and have no reason to believe that will not be so again.”
In the last three years the CWU has donated £1.8 million to the Labour Party. If this motion passes, as seems entirely likely, then what other demands will the union paymasters of the Labour Party start submitting? Will it be the extremist Left wing views of the current leadership of the union movement which will write the next Labour manifesto? Whatever happens cannot be good for democracy. The political career of Neil Hamilton evaporated when he was found guilty of accepting cash just to ask a Parliamentary Question or two. What should happen to Ed Miliband and the Labour Party if it shows itself willing to create policy for the whole nation as pay back for left wing union support?