Strong Parties, Clean Politics
Article posted by Unlock Democracy
Why should the public be concerned with the health of political parties? Why should they care enough to contribute more public money to sustain them?
In this incisive report, “Strong Parties, Clean Politics,” illustrates how party funding reform can offer a rare opportunity to look a the general health of our parties, to stabilise political party membership, remove the concern that parties are beholden to a few rich backers, and to create a framework under which parties seek new and effective opportunities to engage with the electorate.
Our recommendations include a cap on donations, the introduction of a system of registered supporters or matched funding for small donations. In addition to this we seek to counter the centralisation of politics by significantly reducing the amount of money parties can spend at a national level while increasing the amount they can spend locally and introducing a 50% rebate for money spent in a constituency.
The paper also contains articles by Martin Linton MP (Labour), Andrew Tyrie MP (Conservative) and Matthew Taylor MP (Liberal Democrat) outlining views from their different political perspectives and showing that there is support for reform on all sides of the political divide.
May 18th, 2006 at 2:50 pm
[...] Strong Parties, Clean Politics (free download) [...]
February 16th, 2007 at 11:32 am
[...] Our starting point for our party funding proposals is political engagement. We want to see as many people as possible funding political parties with their fivers and tenners. Our original proposals, published in 2003, are for pound-for-pound matched funding for donations up to around £100, although we’d be happy with an upper limit of around £20. Compared to the Conservative policy, which means that an individual donating £3,000 would be entitled to £660 tax relief, this is quite modest and, we would argue, do more to encourage engagement. [...]
April 24th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
[...] organisation, the New Politics Network, made broadly the same point in its first discussion paper on the subject back in 2003. We agree with him that existing state support is extensive. We agree [...]
October 10th, 2008 at 1:46 am
[...] in the funding of political parties and published several publications on the topic, most notably these two. For a couple of years this was my main focus at work. Combined with my experience of the party [...]