party funding

why is party funding controversial?

• membership decline = subscription fee decline

• moved to centrally-organised media-based campaign methods - more money

  • increased reliance on donations from individuals, corporations and trade unions

• controversy over donations is nothing new

  • Labour accepted Bernie Ecclestone’s donation (F1 boss) » F1 exempted from tobacco ban advertising in 1998

how are parties funded in the UK?

• membership fees

  • largely in decline

• donations

  • can be from individuals, corps or pressure groups

• grants

  • short money given to opposition parties for Parliamentary duties; calculated based on no. of seats n votes

  • Cranborne Money scheme for largest 2 opposition parties

  • Electoral Commission has £2m from UK Parliament to parties with >2 sitting MPs

party funding rules:

• all parties must submit audited, annual accounts - made public

• Commission monitors and publishes details of party spending

• all donations >£7500 must be declared by parties to the Commission, made publicly available

• The Act increased the amount of Short Money

• election spending was capped at £30k/constituency

significance of 2019:

• 2019 arrangements benefitted 2 main parties

  • only tories n labour had realistic chance of gaining power

• parties heavily reliant on donors

  • top 50 donors had donated £35.5m between them

  • con = 24.9m from lord bamford, 1.24m from michael spicer, 1m from toby gallagher

  • largest donor: lord sainsbury, 8m for lib dems

  • labour got 5k from top donors, 3mil from trade unions

• corruption evidence is weak

  • however, perception that parties work donors n not public un

• ppera written before social media

  • needs updating to encompass potential social media risks

should UK parties be state-funded?

• state funding would reduce parties’ perceived dependence on vested interests

• state funding could be allocated based on an agreed measure of parties’ popularity n democratic engagement

• current regulatory framework is inadequate

  • since passing ppera (2000), allegations of donations securing peerages n political influence have continued

• provision of a reliable income stream from the state would weaken their links to larger society, reducing need to reach out to society for members, etc

• may create bias in favour of existing parties if the level of state funding reflected past party performance measured in terms of votes cast in preceding elections

• politically, state funding’s too controversial

  • public already distrusts politicians

  • ppl don’t like idea of their money going into parties they don’t support

  • money could be allocated to extremist parties eg bnp

  • right to freedom of expression = financially supporting party one actually likes