ETVT the time has come for state funding for political parties in the UK Flashcards
There are ‘Hidden’ forms of influence from individuals and Interest groups that promote corruption
PPERA 2000 regulatory measures have ultimately failed and donations with political influences and corruption has still continued.
In March 2006, several men nominated for life peerages by then Prime Minister Tony Blair were rejected by the House of Lords Appointments Commission. It was later revealed they had loaned large amounts of money to the governing Labour Party.
A loophole in the current regulation made it so that although anyone donating even small sums of money to a political party has to declare this, loaning money at commercial rates of interest did not.
In total, it is believed that Peter Cruddas has donated over £3,000,000 to the Conservative Party. On 31 July 2013 on the BBC’s Newsnight programme he stated that he had donated over £1,000,000.
In June 2019, Sky News reported that Cruddas donated £50,000 to Boris Johnson’s Conservative leadership campaign.
In 2020, Cruddas was nominated by the leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister Boris Johnson for a peerage. The House of Lords Appointments Commission advised that it could not support his nomination. Johnson nonetheless decided that the appointment should proceed, becoming the first ever prime minister to overrule an advice of the commission.
Further regulations such as capping donations at 10,000 has been spoken about but looks unlikely as the conservatives and labour cannot agree whether trade union funding should be capped.
Corruption and hidden influence is not a issue
A state funding scheme to prevent corruption and influence in donations would cost £25 million per year of tax-payers money, one argument is that why should tax payers donate to parties they are not politically aligned with.
In a free democratic society it is the right of the individual to have freedom of expression and financially support any party that they see fit, the answer therefore is not state funding but more transparency on party funding.
‘EXPENSES SCANDAL’ The United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal was a major political scandal that emerged in 2009, concerning expenses claims made by members of the British Parliament in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords over the previous years.
The disclosure of widespread misuse of allowances and expenses permitted to Members of Parliament aroused widespread anger among the UK public
State funding would take parties attention away from donors and towards the electorate.
State funding would reduce parties dependence on interests of donors and other interest groups.
State funding would allow parties to be more responsive to the view of voters and party members, increasing their trust in politics and turning their interests towards the electorate and not donors and interest groups.
In May 2020 the Times revealed that the preceding year political donors had donated £35.5 million between them, the conservatives received £25 million of that money, including £3.6 million from Lord Bamford Chairman of the JCB and £1 million from financer Michael spencer.
Labour received large donations from the trade unions, including £3m from UNITE.
There is now a perception that parties work for their donors and not the electorate, this undermines democracy.
Provision of income from the state weakens links to larger society
Provision of income from the state may weaken their links to larger society, parties currently need to reach out to society to recruit members and to seek donations, this means they have to listen to the interests of groups and individuals and represent such views.
The conservative party for example has looked to reach out into society and has expanded its membership base, increasing its membership from £124,000 in 2018 to 160,000 in 2019.
Furthermore Labour Party under Tony Blair showed that he wanted to reduce his reliance on trade union donations and aim for a wider range of income sources, and under Jeremy Corbyn the labour party developed a large and healthy stream of membership income due to a large increase in membership and looked to attract smaller donations.
Labour recived £5 million from trade unions in 2019, representing the working class?
Increased from 201,293 on 6 May 2015 (the day before the 2015 general election) to 388,407 on 10 January 2016.
State funding would help small parties
The two-party system is reinforced through the unfair current party funding system.
2019 election shows this well, UK political parties received £30.7m in donations and the conservative party received 63%, the Labour party receiving 18% and the Brexit party receiving 13%. As a result the conservative and labour party can only realistically finance the campaign required to win power.
The conservative party received over £13 million from individual donations in 2019 compared to £14,000 for the SNP and only £232,000 for the green party.
State funding instead could be worked out on votes won across a range of different elections, including local ones and the size of their party membership, this would be more democratic and would remove the unfair advantage that some parties have simply because they have wealthy backers.
This reinforces a two party system, where the electorate has limited voter choice and representation is not effective.
‘Short money’ cannot be used for campaigning so isn’t any help towards helping smaller parties attempt to reach a position of power, furthermore the Labour party received £8 million in 2019 whereas the green party and the DUP both received under £300,000.
State funding is not needed to help smaller parties
You could argue that the current system allows for some extent of state funding, which is beneficial and helps smaller parties compete. ‘Short money’ for example is available to opposition parties in the commons and its calculated on the basis of the number of seats and voters they have.
For example in 2019 the SNP received £800,000 worth of short money.
State funding based on votes one may be more democratic but would not help reduce the two-party system the conservative and labour governments in 2019 won 82% of the seats in the commons and in 2017 they won 67%. State funding would still allocate money overwhelmingly towards the two main parties.
