HONOURS EVEN…

The Donations Award

The questionable relationship between big donations (and donors) to political parties might in some circumstances be considered to be par for the course (to use a golfing term). Significant donors to the larger Westminster village based (and focused) political parties often tend to get rewarded with gongs, baubles and trinkets. Between 2006 to 2012 those donors giving £50,000 or more to Westminster based political parties were around 6,000 times more likely to receive a peerage than the ordinary person on the street. It has been 80 years since Maundy Gregory became the first (and only) individual to be prosecuted for selling honours and the relationship between cash (and kind) donations and honours remains as strong as ever. The House of Lords Appointments Commission which (nominally) oversees the award of honours is in truth pretty powerless and mostly accepts party leaders’ choices in all but the most exceptional of circumstances. Selling honours is illegal yet more than a few years ago a parliamentary committee came to the conclusion that any successful prosecution would be unlikely unless the culprits were caught in the act so to speak, so the law remains unchanged, so basically the Westminster based political parties have a free-for-all. The honours system as long as it remains under the control of Westminster will remain flawed and abused with little prospect of any meaningful reform. What this on-going abuse of the honors system by the Westminster based political parties means in practice is that the award of honors to hardworking individuals who have worked tirelessly for our communities, to society and to the lives of others over the years is continually tarnished and the value of honours is diminished.  

HAS THE MASK FINALLY SLIPPED…

News that David Cameron has directly intervened in an independent inquiry into political funding to demand a more favourable outcome for the Conservatives, should not really come as much of a surprise to most independently minded observers. Nor should the fact that the Conservatives apparently favour a severe clampdown on Labour's trade union donations come as much as a surprise.

The Independent (Saturday 22nd October 2001) reveals that the Committee on Standards in Public Life will propose a £10,000 cap on donations to parties by individuals and organisations in a sensible effort to "take the big money out of politics". With this avenue of potential funding cut off, if the proposals go through, political parties would receive a multimillion-pound increase in state funding.

The proposals would also bring in much stricter controls over the affiliation fees paid by the unions to Labour (as a Labour loathing Unison member I would more than warmly welcome this) but they would apparently not be subject to the cap. The Independent says that Cameron has apparently made a last-minute appeal to the committee to revise its draft proposals.

Somewhat naturally the Conservatives, who tend to have more flush individual donors, who no doubt pay for what they get, than other parties, are not surprisingly in favour a £50,000 pound cap. One wonders whether the Conservative mask has finally slipped so that their true colours are revealed or whether or not Cameron is merely reverting to type.