With respect to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, I will not follow him and try to answer those questions. Many points will emerge in the case I wish to make. I have a speech of some length prepared and I do not want to make it too long because other hon. Members wish to take part. The right hon. and learned Gentleman can try to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, and address the House if he wishes. I am trying to suggest to him—and if he is not in the mood to take my advice he does not have to—that there are serious issues raised by this motion to which he and his hon. Friends must address their minds instead of trying to muddy the waters by raising side issues.

I put it to the House that the seizure of £100,000 from the political fund—and, of course, it was from the political fund ; it is not for me or anyone else to produce evidence to that effect to the right hon. and learned Gentleman—was an outrageous development for two reasons.

The first and less serious—although still very serious—is that if a fine is imposed, for whatever reason, on an organisation with a large number of members, it is equitable that the fine should fall upon all the members and not simply upon some of them. What happened in this instance was a gross departure from all normal standards of equity. If the Attorney-General is to address the House later, I hope he will deal with this particularly.

The political levy is paid by some and not all of the members of the AUEW. It is a paid levy from which members can contract out, and from which many do contract out, without any loss of other rights or status as members of the AUEW. The political fund cannot by law be replenished from the general funds. I put it to the House that it is indefensible for a fine levied upon a union as a whole to be levied on the political fund raised by some of the members on a voluntary basis.

The second and more serious point is that this whole episode breaches a constitutional convention of great importance—that the machinery of the State, and particularly the machinery of the courts, should not be used in order to tip the balance of political advantage between the political parties in this country. That, of course, is what has happened. The effect of this development is a serious weakening of the funds of the Labour Party. The court has acted in such a way as to strengthen the Conservative Party in relation to the Labour Party. Again, I ask hon. Members opposite to face up to that simple fact.

After all, £100,000 is a large sum of money. In practical terms, it has been taken away from the Labour Party—not taken from the union for any of its normal purposes as a union. It was money held in trust for political purposes which would have been used for the benefit of the Labour Party. The sum amounts to approximately one-fifth of the total affiliation fees paid by unions to the Labour Party in the last financial year. It amounts to approximately one-quarter of the sum that the Labour Party might have been expected to raise as a General Election fund for the purposes of the next election. So it is a serious and substantial sum.

In addition, it falls on us, and we are in the nature of things a party which is less prosperous than the Conservative Party. The Conservatives have more money than we do ; they get much larger sums from the rich backers of the Conservative Party than we ever get from our trade union friends. They get funds contributed by firms which originate from money spent across the shop counter by customers who have no right to contract out from that part of the price of the goods which eventually finds its way into Conservative Party funds. A party in that position should be ashamed of a situation in which this development has arisen.