I was catching up on Today in Parliament last night (thank you iTunes) and heard this absolute gem from Gordon Prentice:
“I want to alert the House and the people outside to what this is all about. It is about very rich people buying elections. We can listen to the exchanges between lawyers until we are blue in the face, but that is what it is about—multimillionaires who live abroad buying elections.”
In proper ex-CRD style, I source this to Hansard, 13 July 2009, col. 81. Or click here.
I have two things to say: Lord Sainsbury, Bernie Ecclestone & the trade unions. And if you can’t persuade people of the benefits of your programme sufficiently that some of them support you financially, I’d argue that your policy programme is probably not good enough for voters either.
Anyway, given what’s happened in recent months with MPs expenses, I was initially all for demanding stricter rules, independent oversight and stringent limits. Then I thought – is that really consistent with my belief in smaller government, transparency and wider participation?
I don’t think so.
When the proposals for more state funding for political parties were first made in early 2006, I had a lengthy (and ultimately pointless) argument about the merits or not of no donations. I wanted there to be less state funding (see above, point 2 to Gordon Prentice), with political parties able to take funding from absolutely any individual, of any amount, at any time – a total free for all with two important provisos. Firstly that no companies could donate so you always knew who the individual was. And secondly that every donation should be published within seven days.
I believe that the only way to ensure honest political funding is by being fully transparent. If a party wants to take money from someone – fine, but they need to be prepared to defend their involvement. And realistically if someone is determined to get round the rules, they will, despite the theory of the Governor’s eyebrow or the smell test. So I think the best way is to get it all out in the open, be honest and straightforward with people and to make sure that individuals are willing to take responsibility both for who they give donations to and who parties take donations from.
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