captured the state, don't need a party, don't need any members, don't have turbulent people having opinions, who then get money from rich people and run our state without consulting anyone else." Ian McCartney The Labour Party chairman Ian McCartney defended the loans with the BBC quoting him as saying: "Bear in mind too that we fought the 2005 election in the face of a very heavily funded Conservative campaign – a large part of which was reportedly funded by loans, and targeted at individual Labour MPs." On 31 March 2006 McCartney said the Conservative Party still looked like they had "something to hide" by not revealing the identity of their foreign lenders. "We need to know who these people are, where they reside, where they pay tax, how much they lent and on what terms. "It is not up to the Tories to claim that they did not breach the law. That's the job of the Electoral Commission. "By failing to provide these details the Conservatives and David Cameron are fuelling suspicion that they have even more to hide." John Prescott John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, told the BBC that he was "not happy" he found out about the millions loaned to the Labour Party by reading it in the papers but insisted the loans would later appear in the party's audited accounts. He refused to give a guarantee that Labour had not given peerages for loans, saying "I am bound to say not all the information possibly is out yet and we are still looking at it." Prescott said he favoured a change to state funding but also said he would not rule out the suggestion that private loans should be capped: "There's a kind of unhealthy approach to political financing in this country. What we need to do is have a healthy debate." Prescott himself became involved in accusations of influence peddling when newspapers suggested he had made planning decisions in favour of Minerva plc, a company chaired at various times by two of the lenders involved, Sir David Garrard and Andrew Rosenfeld. He told BBC One's The Politics Show he did not "know anything" about the firm or secret loans to the party. He said he had received the planning requirements for a skyscraper in London and the Park Place shopping centre in Croydon but felt the decision could be made locally. "I passed it