Party Funding Flashcards
What are the three ways Parties are funded?
-Party membership
-Donations
-Government funding
What did Bernie Ecclestone do in 1997?
-Donated £1million to the Labour Party under the new labour campaign with Blair
Why did New Labour in 1997 need high donations?
-Became independent from the trade unions > loss of funding
-falling labour membership
What is the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 and what does it do?
-All Political parties must register with the Electoral Commission and provide regular returns of their income and expenditure
-Limits how much a party can spend in the run-up to elections > £30,000 per constituency
-Parties have to declare all large donations (over £7,500)
What is the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009 and what did it do?
-Increased powers of the Electoral Commission > strengthened the provisions of PPERA
What are the benefits and limitations of Membership Subscriptions?
-Agreed to be the fairest and most transparent method of funding
-Large numbers paying small amounts ensures that no single donor gets undue influence
-Limitation > Party memberships do not in themselves raise enough to sustain the level of finance needed
What are the benefits and limitations of Individual donors?
-Limitation > potential corruption and undue political influence
-‘Cash for honours’ accusations > Micheal Farmer gave more than £6.4million to the conservatives since 2010 and was given a peerage
What is state funding?
-‘pence per vote’ or ‘pence per member’
-Parties can receive public funds through Policy development grants (£2 million per year)
What is Short money(Commons) and Cranbourne money(Lords)?
Why should the state fund political parties?
-‘Clean’ money without dependence on wealthy donors and interest groups who may expect something in return (honours or policies)
-If parties had state funding which matched with their vote > encourage them to campaign in all seats to increase party vote > not just in key marginals > helps democracy overall
-Enable politicians to focus on representing their constituency and developing policies that benefit the entire nation not just those who donate large sums
Why shouldn’t the state fund political parties?
-There will always be inequality with party funding > some parties are larger and more popular than others
-Parties could be isolated from the ‘real world’ if links and donations from interest groups are cut
-Funding based on the vote > strengthens larger parties > more difficult for smaller parties to get off the ground > FPTP makes this disproportional
