Political Parties: Funding

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

I take the point that my noble friend is making. That is why I said that we will be getting ahead with the issue early in this Parliament. We need to deal with this. As long as I have been in politics, one party or another has become embroiled in some scandal or another—and it will happen again unless we face up to the fact that politics costs money. If you want to keep big money and big influence out of politics, you have to do some radical things about party funding.

[Lord Clark of Windermere]

Does the Minister accept that the problem is not only the total amount of money spent on political parties but the disproportionate amounts spent in individual constituencies? It is now so expensive that in certain constituencies independents simply cannot afford to run. That cannot be good for democracy.

[Lord McNally]

That is absolutely true. We have seen in all political parties a nuclear arms race of political spending. I pay tribute to the last Government for putting a cap on it, for which I think even the Conservative Party was grateful in the end. If there was no cap, fundraising would go on and on. The problem with campaign expenditure is that it is like expenditure on advertising: we all know that half of it is wasted, but we do not know which half.