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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: So political party donations have been thrown under the spotlight once again with the revelation that the co-treasurer of the Conservative party was filmed offering access to the Prime Minister and other policy makers in return for six figure sums of money. Well despite Peter Cruddas’s swift resignation, it’s of course unwelcome new for David Cameron who has pledged to clean up the shady game of political lobbying. In a moment I’ll be speaking the Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, Michael Fallon but first let me just alert you to our tweeters today, our Twitter commentators are John Higginson, political editor at the Metro newspaper, Andrew Woodcock, political editor of the Press Association and they are joined by Kevin Schofield, he’s political correspondent at the Sun. They provide their reactions via Twitter and you can read those on the side panels of your set and you can also follow on our website skynews.com/politics and you can join in if you use the hashtag #murnaghan. Well let’s say a very good morning then to the Conservative party deputy chairman, Michael Fallon.

MICHAEL FALLON: Good morning.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: So the Conservative party says that donations do not buy policy but just a few hours ago or a few days ago your co-treasurer was saying precisely the opposite. Who’s right?

MICHAEL FALLON: Well he was wrong, that’s why he has resigned. He was blustering, he was clearly wrong. Let me be very clear about this, we rely on lots of individual donations but you can’t buy favours with those donations and you certainly can’t dictate policy with those donations. We’re not going back to the days of Bernie Ecclestone, if you remember, who gave the Labour government a million pounds to alter the rules on tobacco sponsorship for Formula One. We’ve cleaned all that up, any meetings with ministers are now recorded and published so everybody can see who’s meeting whom.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: So why do you think Peter Cruddas was making it up?

MICHAEL FALLON: Well he was our new co-treasurer, I think he was very anxious to get in one of his first donations and he was blustering and boasting and that was clearly wrong. By the way, no donation was actually formally offered, no donation was accepted and it certainly wouldn’t have been accepted on that kind of basis. What you can’t do if you are a donor is get control of or dictate any kind of policy.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: But making it up, Peter Cruddas was making it up. Why did you appoint him to such a senior position if he was that flaky, in your view?

MICHAEL FALLON: Well he made a mistake here and he’s resigned and he’s been replaced this morning by a very experienced Treasurer, Stanley Fink, who has now taken his place. He made a mistake, he over boasted about what you could do with a particular donation. That was wrong. The donation was then not received, it wasn’t offered, it wasn’t received and it would certainly not have got through our normal compliance checks that we would run on any particular donation.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: But I mean you do get access to the Prime Minister and other Cabinet Ministers if you for instance buy yourself a swanky table at one of these big fund raising dinners you have.

MICHAEL FALLON: Well businessmen of course, like anybody else, charities, voluntary organisations, have access, get access to politicians all the time. They have meetings probably with Ed Miliband and Ed Balls and the Shadow Cabinet, that is part of the process of government, is listening to business, listening to outside organisations. That goes on all the time but the big change now is that if anybody meets a Minister in the government for the first time ever, those meetings are not only recorded but they’re published, they’re published quarterly so everybody can see who’s been meeting who.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: So just to be crystal clear about Peter Cruddas, he was totally insulated was he from the policy making process? He had never met or knew the Policy Unit?

MICHAEL FALLON: Absolutely, and seems to have had very little understanding of it. He refers to a Policy Committee, there isn’t a Policy Committee. Policy is decided by David Cameron and the cabinet in Number 10 Downing Street, not by anybody who wants to give a donation to the Conservative party, I can assure you of that.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: It all does though, I mean these words are on tape, he did say them and he was the co-Treasurer, it makes the Prime Minister look rather silly, doesn’t it? That outside government he actually predicted that lobbying was one of the big scandals coming down the line.

MICHAEL FALLON: And he has done something about it. Not only are these meetings, any meetings now that do take place, not only are they published for everybody to see but we put plans before parliament for a register of lobbyists. We are, and we’re talking to the Labour party about reforming party funding, we are cleaning up British politics and we are not going back, as I said, to the bad old days when you could give the Labour government, the Labour party I’m sorry, you could give the Labour party a million pounds.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Okay, but with that mission in mind it looks rather unfortunate. We’ve just got reaction in from the Prime Minister so let’s pause and just listen to Mr Cameron.

INTERVIEWER: It’s quite a shocking story, people are going to look at this and think Conservative party donors are making government policy.

DAVID CAMERON: Well look, what happened is completely unacceptable. This is not the way that we raise money in the Conservative party. It shouldn’t have happened, it is quite right that Peter Cruddas has resigned. I’ll make sure there is a proper party enquiry to make sure this can’t happen again.

INTERVIEWER: Are you going to reform party funding now?

DAVID CAMERON: We have reformed party funding. I took over a party with £28 million of debt, it’s now virtually debt free. We have massively broadened our donor base, we have very strict rules, very strict compliance and I am going to make sure the rules are properly complied with in every case.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: The Prime Minister there, about to run the Sport Relief Mile I believe on a sunny Sunday. The thing is, Michael Fallon, do you want to thank the Sunday Times for all this because if the Sunday Times had not discovered this, presumably Mr Cruddas was going around saying these kind of things to other potential donors and it is not the Conservative party that have told us about this.

MICHAEL FALLON: Well we’ll have a look at the evidence that the Sunday Times has produced and if there is any kind of loophole in our rules or there is a point at which the compliance checks that we would always have once the donation is put forward, if there is any loophole there of course we will learn from this and tighten it up. But look, the donation was not accepted, Peter Cruddas has now resigned and there is much more transparency than there was.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: You have to look through previous donations though, don’t you? As you say, you’ll have to go back through the books because the lobbyist involved here as well was also talking about foreign nationals being able to disguise their identity to donate money to your party.

MICHAEL FALLON: Well that can’t happen. You can’t give money as a foreign national …

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: No, exactly, but you can disguise it as coming from elsewhere.

MICHAEL FALLON: Well you wouldn’t be able to do that, that would have been picked up in our compliance checks, you can’t disguise the source of donations but we have lots and lots of individual donations. I think you ought to ask questions also about the Labour party that has a couple of really big donations. UNITE for example giving £5 million to the Labour party, what sort of access and influence do you think they get with that?

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well the Labour party would say that is part of their internal democracy and that’s an argument for the Labour party but do you think you are trying to get all politicians in this together? At last is there going to be some kind of move to really regulating donations and making sure that they are limited?

MICHAEL FALLON: Well that is beginning to happen, not only are meetings with Ministers now being published but as I said, we have plans in front of Parliament for a proper Register of Lobbyists so that everybody knows who is acting on behalf of whom and we are continuing to talk to the Labour party about reforming party funding generally. We would like to see a cap on donations, I don't think it’s right by the way that one trade union should give one party £5 million and be able to decide who the leader of the party is.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Did you ever meet Peter Cruddas? You must have done.

MICHAEL FALLON: I don’t think I have met Peter Cruddas, no. I think I’ve seen him across a room but I haven’t met him, no.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: I know you’re involved in policy, so that’s another example in your book of the firewalls operating or was it just accident that you never met him? One would have thought that the co-Chairman and the co-Treasurer would have had some contact.

MICHAEL FALLON: No, they’re not involved with policy. Policy is decided in the government by the Cabinet, by Ministers, Ministers of the Crown. Anybody who has a meeting with those Ministers, that has to be published. I need to get you off this idea that anybody can give money to the Conservative party and start dictating policy, that doesn’t happen. They give money because they share our values generally. They are not able to dictate policy.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: But the appointment of Peter Cruddas who you are now saying was blustering and effectively making it all up, his appointment begs questions about the controls in place. I mean he gave a lot of money to your party, you say whoops, let’s make him co-Treasurer, he’s got a lot of friends with a lot of money and look what he went and did.

MICHAEL FALLON: Well he has made a mistake and he’s paid for that mistake. He’s resigned, he’s been replaced but as I say, no donation was actually accepted, no donation was there. It wouldn’t have got through our compliance checks. He made a mistake, looks to have made a mistake, we’ll look at the evidence, in the way that he boasted about access. He has made a mistake, he resigned, it was wrong.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Okay, Mr Fallon, thank you very much.

MICHAEL FALLON: Thank you.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Michael Fallon there.