Asked by: Victoria Prentis (Conservative - Banbury)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
What plans the Government has to use the centenary of Nancy Astor’s election to Parliament to encourage more women to stand for public office.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
Everyone in this house owes a great debt to Nancy Astor. As the first woman to take her seat in the Commons in December 1919, she forged the way for women to take their rightful place in our representative democracy - and I’m proud that she was a Conservative. Since 2018 the government’s suffrage centenary fund has been supporting projects to increase women’s political participation in the years to come
Asked by: Victoria Prentis (Conservative - Banbury)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the Electoral Commission's 2013 recommendation that political parties that receive and spend less than £500 annually should be exempt from submitting a full statement of accounts.
Answered by John Penrose
The Electoral Commission published a report “a regulatory review of the UK’s party and electoral finance laws” in June 2013 that made 50 recommendations. The report’s first recommendation proposed changes to the reporting requirements for parties that receive and spend less than £500 annually. Such a change would require primary legislation. The Government recognises that there is a balance to be struck between reducing the burden on smaller parties and maintaining transparency of the funding of all parties which contest elections in the UK.