given my accumulated experience and deep sense of public service, as well as being able to devote the time to undertake the responsibility effectively, I would be able to make a contribution to the parliamentary process." 1997 Labour Party commitments The 1997 General Election Labour Party manifesto was entitled "new Labour because Britain deserves better". In the section headed "We will clean up politics", the text pointed to the debasing of democracy through Conservative MPs who had taken cash for asking questions in the House of Commons. A pledge was made to the "reform of party funding to end sleaze" with the commitment to a law to require all parties to declare the source of all donations above a minimum figure, which Labour already did voluntarily. Foreign funding would be banned. These commitments were delivered in 2000 with the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. It also described the need to reform the House of Lords which would end the right by law of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords. This commitment was delivered in 1999 with the House of Lords Act 1999. In relation to the system of appointment of life peers Labour's stated objective was to ensure that over time party appointees as life peers would more accurately reflect the proportion of votes cast at the previous general election, a commitment that has since been altered so that the two main parties in the House of Lords should instead have approximately equal strength. Loans On 12 March 2006, the Sunday Times reported that shortly before being told that he would receive a peerage, Patel had been asked to change a donation to the Labour Party he was planning to make into an unsecured loan. On 26 March 2006, The Independent confirmed that it was Lord Levy who had asked Patel to switch using this unsecured loan approach. He agreed and loaned £1.5 m to the party, telling them that he would be prepared to change the loan into a donation at some point in the future. Over the next few days stories were printed which stated that the Labour Party had borrowed £3.5 million from private individuals during 2005, the year of a general election. It was subsequently revealed that a total of £13.95 million had been loaned by wealthy individuals to support Labour's election campaign. The figures released mean the bulk