Friday 30 November 2007

Vote: Should the state funding of political parties be raised to £25m/year?

In March this year Sir Hayden Phillips produced his review of political party funding requested by Tony Blair in 2005.

The review points to two main areas of contention that need to be addressed before an agreement can be made:

1. Labour are likely to be against any cap on individual donations that could spoil it’s relationship with the trade unions

2. The Tories, who are known for pouring money into local elections to win marginal seats, are likely to oppose spending limits at local constituency level.

Sir Hayden said: "Reaching agreement will, however, depend on the willingness of the parties to engage constructively with each other in order to find a common outcome, That will take some determination, and some compromise on all sides."

State funding for the opposition parties currently stands at about £6m/year. This funding is allocated to counterbalance the ruling party’s access to governmental resources, such as the Civil Service. Sir Hayden's review recommends party funding to be increased to £25m/year?

Q. Taking into account the recent fiasco centred around "Donorgate": Should the state funding of political parties be raised to £25m/year?

Click: HERE to vote.

(The results are archived by the British Library)

3 comments:

James Higham said...

State funding should be abolished and private funding deregulated.

Anonymous said...

If there is going to be state funding of political parties I`mgoing to set up my own political party, for no other reason than to benefit myself.

Daily Referendum said...

Sounds good to me Robin.