Tom Pursglove
Main Page: Tom Pursglove (Conservative - Corby)Department Debates - View all Tom Pursglove's debates with the HM Treasury
(8 years, 9 months ago)
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John Penrose
As I mentioned, the amount of Short money has gone up by 50% since 2010, so Opposition parties have a great deal more money with which to do their job than they did before. I refer the hon. Gentleman back to the comment made when we last considered this issue, about 10 days ago, by the hon. Member for Clacton, who pointed out that the costs of research and many other political functions are now potentially lower. Given what is being asked of many Departments and local authorities, it is certainly reasonable to ask people to work more efficiently in future.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
I think the public will be astonished that full accounts do not have to be published in this age of transparency. How is the Minister going to put that right?
John Penrose
I devoutly hope that the result of this process will be an increase in transparency. We already have improved transparency in pretty much every other area of taxpayer-funded spending, and we already have transparency that is far better than that for Short money on policy development grants—a very similar kind of grant. It would therefore be increasingly out of step with the modern world for us to assume that Short money should somehow be magically exempt.