Political Parties

Question 1

How are parties funded in the UK?

Answer 1

1. Membership Fees
2. Donations
3. Grants

Question 2

Membership fees

Answer 2

Parties recieve their funding from membership subscriptions, this has been in decline although with the collapse of party membership, partiluary for the conservative party, although there was a surge of party membership post 2015 for the greens, labour and SNP which saw this form of income even exceeding donations.

Question 3

Donations

Answer 3

These can be from individuals, corporate donations from buisnesses and insitutional donations from pressure groups such as trade unions.
Critiques have long alleged that labour has in effect been controlled by the trade unions while the conservatives are similiary open to the allegation that their major buisiness backers exter undue ifnluence over policy development.

Question 4

Grants

Answer 4

There is a limited amount of public money made available to the parties in the form of grants.
SHORT MONEY, this is available to the opposition parties to help them with their parliamentary duties, but not with the election or campaigning expenses. It is calculated on the number of seats and votes won at the last election with additional income for the leader of the opposition to assist them with their key consitutional role of holding the government to account.
CRANBORNE MONEY, this is a similair scheme that operates for the largest and second largest opposition party in the house of lords.
The electoral commission has 2m in money from the UK parliament, to allocate to parties with at least two sitting MPs, to develop policies to include in their election manifestos.

Question 5

Party Funding Rules

Answer 5

1997 Labour commission a review of party finance by the committee on the standards in public life. The proposals were adopted by partie.
PPERA 2002 managed party finance by regulating donations and spending and increasing the transparency about where parties got their money from.
- All parties must submit annual accounts, which are made public, while the commission monitors and publishes details of party spending during elections.
- All donations in excess of 7,500 must be declared by parties to the electoral commission.
- Increased the amount of short money available for opposition parties.
2016 the conservative government introduced a 3.6bn reduction in short money.

Election spending is capped at 30,000 per consituency contested during an election to prevent parties attempting to outspend each other.