Jon Bright (London, OK): Iain Dale has had a sneak preview of the next tranche of the Conservative's Democracy Task Force reporting, unless it is the final thing. A few of the proposals he picks out:
- Party funding reform: limits on GE spending, caps on donations (and less corporate / TU donations), increased state support (but abolition of the 'communications allowance')
- Honours to be taken out of ministerial hands
- MPs not to vote on their own pay / allowances
- Parliamentary Commissioner for standards to investigate breaches of the ministerial code
- Advisory Committee on business appointments to be put on a statutory basis
As ever with these reports, they do not automatically form Conservative policy, so we're still waiting for a strong indication about whether it will be treated like the one produced by Iain Duncan Smith or the one produced by Zac Goldsmith. Iain himself gives a Conservative gut reaction against state support for parties. What's striking though (even if it's hard to know if this was a full review of the conclusions) is that it's appearing to be essentially an anti-sleaze manifesto - nothing on the really big issues for democracy in this country (what happened to English Votes for English Matters?). As such, it feels a bit like the delays could have occurred so it could be chopped about a bit to capitalise on Labour's current funding woes - but we'll have to wait for the actual publication to be sure. Unless, Iain, you can give us any further clues?
