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Freedom
it is so important
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Pamphlet 3
Restrict political party funding to membership only
Rationalising the support for political parties and avoidance of enforced tythes.
The Concern
There can be no justification for state aid for political parties. Political parties in the United Kingdom are small private organizations with extremely small memberships. The three largest politicasl parties have a total membership amounting to less than 1% of the electorate of the United Kingdom. This is not only a reflection of the low esteem the general population holds for political parties it also reflects their irrelevance to the needs of the people. Many non-governmental organizations survive on small voluntry donations from their members arnd supporters and are able to have a large impact and propose more rational policies on defined issues than any political party.
British political parties need to learn to represent and articulate issues of importance to the people of the country and in this way attract membership. By attractng membership they can receive more membership fees. There can however, be no justification in there being an arrangement whereby the population at large is taxed against its will and that these funds be passed on to political parties of which they are not members nor support.
Donors
External donors should be capped to a limit of something like £25 each year and donors must be excluded from any form of honours.
Proxies
There are yet to be adequate investigations into the means whereby the recipients of large government contracts can pass money onto employees or proxies who can then pay back political parties in the form of party donations with what is in effect laundered money. The recent step by the government to stop a Serious Fraud Office investigation into allegations of corruption on the Saudi Arabian arms deal seems to be more related to an attempt to hide the benefits received by members of the politial party of the governemnt of the day than to national security. This is an area requiring investigation since the potential for corruption in this domain is many times more significant than private donors or cash for peers type irregularities.
We should not forget that politicians do not represent the people but rather their political parties in Parliament. Therefore on this issue of state funding they cannot be trusted since they will neither seek the view of their constituents nor reflect the views of their constituents on this matter but will support the continuation of state support of political parties (a payment imposed upon the electorate) at the present levels and they are likely to increase this in their own interests. In place of such self-serving shameless corruption the more ethical decision would be to abolish all state funding.
Submitted by Transparency in Democracy, 26th November, 2007
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