Alexandra Runswick (Unlock Democracy): Today Jack Straw has overseen the publication of the White Paper on Party finance and expenditure in the United Kingdom. As someone who has spent the last four years working on party funding reform I’m more interested than most in these proposals. Recent media reports had suggested a certain degree of back tracking but these proposals underwhelmed even my limited sense of expectation.
This white paper is a whitewash. It’s policy-lite and neatly sidesteps all of the difficult decisions that the government has supposedly been thinking about making. Fear not dear reader, you can read the white paper without any danger of being assaulted by anything that so much as resembles a controversial or radical decision. This is a wasted opportunity that will haunt future governments, inflict yet more avoidable funding scandals on the public and in so doing alienate them still further.
The history of party funding reform is littered with weighty tomes on how to clean up politics: from the Houghton Committee in 1976 to the Neil Committee report in 1998, the Electoral Commission report in 2005, the Constitutional Affairs Select Committee investigation into party funding in 2006 and finally after the cash for peerages allegations in 2007, the Sir Hayden Phillips inquiry into the funding of political parties. If any of these passed you by, they all get name checked and reviewed in the white paper. So much so that most of it is a history of how we got to where we are; there is remarkably little on where we go from here. While the long-overdue proposals to beef up the Electoral Commission's role, are to be welcomed, this is in itself a minor reform. The rest of the paper is a muddled mix of excuses for not taking action and even proposals to go backwards.
Jack Straw spoke of the need for consensus, both among the political parties. Well the public has supported caps on donations for some time, polls have repeatedly this, suggesting that two-thirds of the public would support limits to donations. And while I would like there to be agreement between the parties on party funding reform, I find it fascinating that the government is happy to legislate for 42 day detention in the face of opposition from across the political spectrum, but won’t introduce a measly cap on donations. Clearly it’s one rule for abolishing civil liberties and another for proposals that affect party finances.
Independent (and even semi-independent) investigations into party funding invariably recommend change. Sometimes the prescription differs but more recently there has been a degree of consensus about caps on donations and incentivised support of small donations such as tax relief, with matched funding for non-tax payers. The Neill Committee recommended tax relief for small donations and this was the one recommendation that was not implemented in 2000. The Electoral Commission repeated this call in 2005 (in a report that the government didn't even deign to respond to), as did the Constitutional Affairs Select Committee in 2006. At each stage party interests intervene.
The only thing that has changed over the past ten years is that membership of political parties has declined and trust in politics has plummeted. There are now two paid up twitchers in the RSPB for every member of a political party in the United Kingdom. I have nothing against bird watchers, but having a bird table in every back garden is not going to restore the health of our democracy. We need people to participate in politics and this is only likely to happen when we end the perception that money buys influence and policy.
The thing that really got the politicos in the Unlock Democracy office going this afternoon was the proposal to bring back 'triggering'. The fact that one of the few concrete proposals that the government is putting forward is to go back eight years, to reinstate a system that did not work, defies belief. The triggering rules, whereby expenses limits on candidates only kicked in once they officially declared themselves, were abolished in 2000 because they were widely known to be unenforceable. Candidates simply got around the rules by referring to themselves as a 'parliamentary spokesperson' or 'local champion.' Only the inexperienced and incompetent got caught out by these rules. Bringing this law back will be completely symbolic and will achieve nothing.
