Political Parties: Funding

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

It would ill become a government Minister to start suggesting that. I was a special adviser to the Government who brought in Short money and I know the benefit that my party got in opposition from Cranborne money. I know that it is easy to play to the media on this, but political parties need proper funding to do their democratic duty. If you do not do it through legitimate, open, transparent public funding, big money will come in, which, in the end, corrupts the whole system.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, what is “proper funding”? Would it not be better if the political parties spent less on advertising, opinion polls and helicopters, raised more money voluntarily in accordance with the new localism and resisted the blandishments of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, to pick the taxpayer’s pocket?

[Lord McNally]

Again, we have all heard “picking the taxpayer’s pocket”—it gets approval from the media, which have an interest in keeping politicians and politics weak and dependent on their approval—but it is time that politicians got off their knees. I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, that too many of the consultants and advisers who surround political parties think up ways of spending money to justify their own existence. Perhaps the answer lies in what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, suggests: some tie-in between small donations and tax relief that would give a greater and broader base to funding.