Political Donations
Why is eveyone getting so excited about the issue of political donatons to the Labour Party and the idea that by pretending the money came from different people the donor was avoiding publicity?
The problem was that the Labour Party knew, at some level, that he was the donor. There are usually two reasons that people give money to political parties, one is because they believe in what the party stands for and the second is to try to influence the party's policies. Neither of these is necessarily wrong but the idea that very rich people can influence political parties for their own benefit is undemocratic. However given that in modern times parties need large sums of money to run, especially at election time they need donations. We don't want to discourage giving to political parties but we need to avoid the feeling that making large donations is a way of buying influence available only to the rich.
My proposal would be to make the donations secret so that donor would be unkown both to the public and the party. So there would have to be a mechanism by which money could be given but at one remove. It would seem that the best way to do this would be to use the Electoral Commission. So donors would give the money to the Commission, indicating who they wished to support and every three months the Commission would hand cheques to the various political parties saying this much was received during the previous three months.
With such a system there would also need to be some punishment if the donation was made either public or leaked to the political party. What would stop a generous donor mentioning to the party of their choice that of the donation they received last quarter, a significant part of it was from them. The only way to try to stop this happening would be to introduce a penalty if this were to be found out, which is probably quite likely. The best one might be that the money is forfeited and used to defray the expenses of the Electoral Commission though one would have to be sure that the Commission was impartial and honest. An alternative would be to give it to some charity on a rota system. None of this can apply to public companies and trade unions since their activities have to be publicly reported.
One consequence would ceratinly be a dimunition of gifts to political parties but if this is equally true for all parties no harm would be done!
The problem was that the Labour Party knew, at some level, that he was the donor. There are usually two reasons that people give money to political parties, one is because they believe in what the party stands for and the second is to try to influence the party's policies. Neither of these is necessarily wrong but the idea that very rich people can influence political parties for their own benefit is undemocratic. However given that in modern times parties need large sums of money to run, especially at election time they need donations. We don't want to discourage giving to political parties but we need to avoid the feeling that making large donations is a way of buying influence available only to the rich.
My proposal would be to make the donations secret so that donor would be unkown both to the public and the party. So there would have to be a mechanism by which money could be given but at one remove. It would seem that the best way to do this would be to use the Electoral Commission. So donors would give the money to the Commission, indicating who they wished to support and every three months the Commission would hand cheques to the various political parties saying this much was received during the previous three months.
With such a system there would also need to be some punishment if the donation was made either public or leaked to the political party. What would stop a generous donor mentioning to the party of their choice that of the donation they received last quarter, a significant part of it was from them. The only way to try to stop this happening would be to introduce a penalty if this were to be found out, which is probably quite likely. The best one might be that the money is forfeited and used to defray the expenses of the Electoral Commission though one would have to be sure that the Commission was impartial and honest. An alternative would be to give it to some charity on a rota system. None of this can apply to public companies and trade unions since their activities have to be publicly reported.
One consequence would ceratinly be a dimunition of gifts to political parties but if this is equally true for all parties no harm would be done!
posted by Unknown at
11:02 PM
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