The revelations in recent days about Labour party funding will add further fuel to the 'plague on all your houses' attitude in the media and among a growing section of the public about politics and politicians. The rules are quite clear. If you give significant sums of money this has to be reported - you can't 'launder it' through a series of third parties.
The irony of all of this is that the legislation that means donations have to be declared was passed under a Labour government and is something I fully support. Before the 'Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act' was passed (ie under the Conservatives) we had no idea who was giving how much money to who, and what they were getting back for it. The PPERA was meant to introduce transparency into the process.
But incredibly, having introduced the Act, Labour has then tried to find ways to evade it. First we had donors making huge 'loans' to try to avoid declaration, and now we have the money being parceled up and handed on via third parties.
In my view it is time for a severe cap on donations - people should indeed be able to support a party of their choice if they wish, but no-one should be in a position either to buy influence or to appear to buy influence. Decent people are going to get put off going into politics if they think they are simply going to be tarred as 'all the same' and corrupt - we need real transparency and sticking to the rules that have been put in place.
Tuesday, 27 November 2007
Party funding
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3 comments:
Who do you think needs to shoulder the bulk of the blame in this instance Steve?
Why has nobody questitioned the now publically declared donar as to his reasons for illegally donating thro' agents?
Why if he did in the genuine desire to be anonymous he is so public now?
Who leaked / broke the news and to whom and for what motive?
Re 1 (above) you would think that the man whose job it was at the Labour party to comply with the law on donations would actually know what the law said! Beyond that, it's hard to know who knew what and when, so I hope the Police investigation gets to the bottom of it.
Re 2, technically it's not illegal to donate through a third party as long as it is declared. Personally that seems odd to me, but the people who broke the law (if any) were probably the receiving political party who knew that the donation was from a third party and didn't register it as such.
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