Donations to Political Parties - Northern Ireland
From Democracywiki
Central Lobby
December 2005
Northern Ireland is currently exempted from the controls on donations to registered political parties which apply in the rest of the United Kingdom.
This is because of the special circumstances that have existed there, both as regards the possibility of donor intimidation and the desirability of allowingIrish citizens to make donations to Northern Ireland parties, consistent with the principles of the Belfast Agreement.
The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (Disapplication of Part IV for Northern Ireland Parties, etc) Order 2001 (which exempts Northern Ireland parties from the rules on the identity of donors and foreign funding) was extended in January this year for a further two years until February 2007.
During its passage through Parliament the Government made a commitment to introduce a scheme which brought the rules applying in Northern Ireland closer to those of Great Britain.
The Northern Ireland Office consulted on this issue and asked forviews on two proposals:-
- Full application of the PPERA scheme in relation to transparency from February 2007, with a derogation to permit donations from Irish citizens as well as corporate donations from Irish companies based in Ireland.
- Implementation of the PPERA scheme, but with the information provided by parties held by the Commission on a confidential basis. As under PPERA, the Commission would check the legality of UK donations; but the returns would not be published. All other aspects of the declaration regime would operate as under PPERA. As with option (i), the Government would legislate to permit donations from Irish citizens as well as corporate donations from Irish companies based in Ireland. The Government believes that, if adopted, this should be a transitional system with Northern Ireland moving to the full PPERA system at a future date specified in the legislation.
The New Politics Network submitted views as part of the consultation exercise and argued that
In the rest of the UK the publication and scrutiny of donations has allowed ordinary citizens to understand the nature and extent of political donations, in effect to cast sunlight into the darkened corners of the political system. And it is this scrutiny that provides the building blocks for building public trust and confidence in how political parties are funded. In Northern Ireland this is even more necessary, as trust in political parties is even lower than in the rest of the UK.
If it is not possible to fully implement PPERA in Northern Ireland then the Network argued for a system such as is used in Chile whereby
an 'anonymous' donation is given directly to the Electoral Commission who would then be responsible for ensuring that such donations were legal under the PPERA and would then pass the donation on to the specified political party or candidate. The Commission would then publish the amount of the donation and to who whom it was given but would withhold the identity of the donor.
It is expected that the results of the consultation will be published in December and that legislation will be brought before the House in the new year.
