Gifts from Ashcroft may be banned

FUTURE donations to the Conservatives by their party Treasurer, Michael Ashcroft, could be made illegal under proposals to be put before Parliament this week. Backbench Labour MPs are drawing up plans to force through legislation which would ban gifts from "foreign governments and their representatives" as part of the forthcoming shake-up of the law governing the funding of political parties.

This would mean that the Conservative Treasurer's donations to William Hague's party - worth around pounds 1m a year since the general election - would be outlawed because he is an ambassador to the United Nations on behalf of Belize.

The move will follow this week's publication of the Government's draft bill on the funding of political parties. Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, will unveil plans - based on the recommendations of Lord Neill's Committee on Standards in Public Life - to require parties to declare the names of big donors, set up an electoral commission and ban foreign donations.

Attention has focused in Whitehall in recent weeks on the definition of a foreign donation. Ministers have been reluctant to be seen to be targeting Mr Ashcroft, who last week launched a libel action against the Times. Under the Government's own proposals, which stuck closely to Lord Neill's recommendation that donations should be allowed from anyone with the right to vote in Britain, his contributions to Tory Party coffers would be allowed.

However, Martin Linton, the Labour MP for Battersea, plans to table an amendment specifying that the definition of "foreign" should be extended to include anyone who works for a foreign government. The proposal has already won widespread support on the Labour backbenches and, given the party's huge Commons majority, stands a good chance of becoming law.

It would be difficult for the Government to block such a proposal and will also put Mr Hague in an awkward position if he finds himself having to defend gifts from representatives of foreign nations.

The move will exacerbate Conservative fears that Mr Ash-croft is the victim of a Labour-driven conspiracy. However, Mr Linton, while admitting that the proposal would catch the Conservative Treasurer, denied that it was part of a plot to bring him down. "It would be perfectly easy for him to give up his post with the Belizean government and then he would fall outside this measure," he said. He pointed out that Chris Patten had been put in an awkward position when he was Governor of Hong Kong because two Chinese government representatives on the handover committee had also given money to the Conservative Party.

"The Bill should ban not only money from foreign individuals but also gifts from foreign governments or their agents in any shape or form," Mr Linton said.

Labour MPs are also planning to push proposals to outlaw donations from anyone who does not pay tax in the United Kingdom, and to seek to change the rules so that voting rights expire more quickly if somebody does not live in the country. However, the idea of excluding representatives of foreign administrations is the most likely to win wide backbench support and tacit, if not public, government backing.

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