With modern information systems there is no practical reason why parties/candidates can not declare the size and source of all donations and funding (or indeed all their accounts), however large or small, immediately upon receipt (or perhaps 3 working days to allow for overworked candidates..)
Funding levels should be set by parliament according to an agreed formula. That formula should take into account not only a party's success at the ballot box, but also its size (members) and diversity (gender, race, etc). The formula should be reviewed regularly.
Under such a system, and in the absence of corporate funding, only spending would need to be scrutinised which could easily be done by parliament itself.
We have already touched upon the key word here - transparency. In effect, regardless of what expenditure limits are agreed, people need to see that parties are playing by the rules.
There is, of course, an easy way to do this. Each party should nominate a dedicated bank account for its funding - or several bank accounts if it desires to operate regionally. These account numbers are revealed to an independent committee, whose job is to scrutinise every transaction. The rules should clearly state that ALL financial activity should take place through the accounts, so that they can be properly audited. Parties that try to get around this (by setting up other accounts) should be deterred by significant financial penalties.
If certain political activities were disallowed, political parties would not need as many funds as they currently do. I would therefore like to suggest we should ban all advertisements, be they on posters, lamp-posts or billboards, or be they in newspapers, magazines and/or other publications. Other forms of political activity - canvassing, public meetings, rallies etc, along with the publication of leaflets, policy documents, reports and books, as well as discussions and interviews on the media - would be allowed, as usual. But posters and ads, (few of which say very much, anyway), would simply be banned.
I appreciate what Peter is saying but it seems to me to be a recipe for a terribly dull election!
I'd rather the state say that similarly to getting free airtime on TV, parties get a free advert in every registered national newspaper once a week, and a certain number of billboard sites.
The questions is about 'control', not about whether or how much. We currently have a system of controls which, depressingly, not even the Government which enacted them appears able to follow. These controls are meant to ensure that all donations are reported in a timely fashion. I don't think, however, this system is fundamentally broken as to requre a whole raft of new laws. Perhaps a stiff penalty (or stiffer) penalty might impove things, but I suspect Peter Hain thinks the penalties are pretty tough as they are.
Its's not just political parties that would need controlled
It's comparatively easy to to track what an individual has raised and spent
Whatever regulations are written will have to take into account political activities by non-parties - such as trades unions, industry associations or other groups. Otherwise funds will just be diverted from the political parties to the lobbyists.
Should Unison for instance be banned from placing adverts putting forward the concerns of health staff around the election period? (In the old days at least, ads like that were seen as a way of steering votes to the Labour party)
limit expenditure to their income from membership fees
parties should be funded purely by ther membership/subscription fees. donors should not be allowed to influence our politicans just because they have money but neither is there a need for state funding; over the course of a parliament both the labour party and the tories will receive well over £15million pounds in membership fees. how much do they need to set up a website with their manifesto on it? what is it that they spend all this money on? is it on informing us of their policies or is it on manipulating us (supermarket style) into voting for them or, more likely, against the opposition.
parties relying on only their membership fees would have the added benefit of allowing a level playing field with party funding commensurate with their public support.
Which is easier? To control money coming in or to control money going out? I can see no foolproof way for either.
How about encouraging small personal, identifiable donations by matching them, say, with state funding; and discouraging larger donations by taxing them (the larger the more heavily)?
By limiting the total amount that can be spent to a small amount - and having this provided by the candidate themself (perhaps via a loan, per my other comment), the control is easier. Naturally, all spending should be covered by budgets and justified before loans can be issued.
Since I would not allow any other source of money, the control is there.
Any other spending, e.g. centrally to promote the election in general would be conducted by e.g. local or national civil service, and so would be controlled anyway.
Peter raised the interesting prospect of banning forms of advertisement - surely however, the point is that parties competing for power will match spending according to how much benefit they believe they will derive from it? There may be a case for banning very expensive forms of advertising (or by limiting it to state provided slots, as is the case with Party Political Broadcasts) on the grounds that parties are paying silly amounts of money for small benefits that nevertheless all add up ... but the problem surely is not what they are spending it on, but more the concern that a small group of rich donors backing one party swing the whole election?
That being true, our problem is not what the parties spend their funding on, but who gives them their money. In which case, our task is to prevent wealthy individuals from holding significant financial clout over the parties - a means intended by the cap, but in practice that has been ignored. I would still maintain that auditing is the best way to achieve this - and there are excellent legal ways to do it. Using the argument that an MP (or any other elected official) is a public servant, they become subject to public scrutiny, in the same way that the Civil Service is audited every year. You give the audit team full powers of investigation, and powers to impeach any representative found to have breached the rules - a twofold penalty would be best. In the first instance the MP is given a ban from Parliament for the equivalent of two terms - long enough to ruin a career, but short enough to allow for a repentant sinner to return. In the second instance, the party is hit with a fine - that way parties will be encouraged to keep an eye on their MPs and ensure they are adhering to the laws.
Second attempt - lost first when trying to load spell checker which appeared to wipe my text. VERY frustrating.
Initial campaignn funding for individual political aspirants should come from a modest grant from government given on a repayment basis against certified accounts for expenditure incurred where eligible expenditure is pre-defined. Permitted expenditure against this grant is dissemination of a personal political manifesto which is binding on any elected candidate such that departure from the manifesto is a legitimate ground for removal from office by a majority vote by the electing community. Candidates for political office who can show they have mounted a genuine campaign using the initial grant should then be funded by a compulsory levy on every person eligible to vote claimed through each tax return. Following publication of personal manifestos each enfranchised person will nominate the recipient of their levy from amongst those who have mounted an initial campaign. Nominated candidates may use the funding they receive for further campaigning. Candidates who cannot account for the electorate funds they are given will required to refund the money and may be prosecuted and gaoled for theft/misuse of public funds. The prosess is intended to root out opportunities for patronage and for corruption while ensuring that aspirants with no allegience to current mainstream parties have an equal opportunity to mainstream party candidates of being the elected representative for a community .
This is one thing that we already do very well in Britain, thanks to the incredibly dedicated and professional staff at the Electoral Commission. (No, I don't work for them.) Most of the stories around "corruption" over the past few months - Haine, Alexander, Newcastle's Mr Big - have surfaced only because the controls are already working well.
Most candidates, and certainly their agents, at all levels of election already live in fear of the Electoral Commission.
Arguably the pendulum has already swung too far. The electorate already start from a position of cynicism, if not outright suspicion. The result, less willingness to participate from the people who are served by all of this: the electorate. But I guess that is another area for consideration all of its own....
In this thread we invite ideas of how expenditure on politics should be controlled - when it should occur, who should be allowed to do it, etc.