The best of the worst of 2011′s Local Elections #3 Wrong Winners

The NO2AV campaign’s constant refrain in last year’s referendum was ‘the winner should be the winner’. Well if that’s the test, then First Past the Post loses hands down in local government.

Last year in 15 local authorities, the party with the most votes did not win the most seats.These were the ‘wrong winners’. And these perverse outcomes demonstrate the capacity of the system to misrepresent voters’ wishes at every turn:

One factor that increases the chance of such results is the use of multi-member wards (those in which two or three winners are elected). The FPTP system, a flawed method in any case, is especially unsuitable for electing candidates in multimember seats – usually one party will win every seat in the ward, even in a close race.

In our local elections the winner should be the winner. And that’s what Scottish voters now experience electing councillors in multimember seats using the Single Transferable Vote (STV). Parties and independents now win their seats based on their actual popularity.

That’s hardly revolutionary now, is it?

PS: Don’t imagine this problem is restricted to local elections. There have been two General Elections with a ‘wrong winner’ in post-WWII Britain, 1951 and February 1974. It’s part of the price you pay for running elections under FPTP.

For more about last year’s local elections see English Local Elections 2011, Report and Analysis, by Andy White and Magnus Smidak.

Is Youth Vote Worth Fighting for?

Mevan Babakar, (22) Intern with Bite the Ballot

On April 14th Bite the Ballot will be holding the largest registration rally for young voters at the Ministry of Sound. With youth involvement in politics so low; less than half those eligible to vote actually do, it’s time something was done!

Aged 19, I first entered the world of politics motivated by social media campaigns and the wealth of information on the internet. I learnt about the various parties, voting systems and then through the experiences that followed, about the community spirit that can grow around campaigns. However, when it was time to spread the message to my friends, I was met with “Why should I care about politics?” or “What’s the point, it’s not like any of it makes a difference in the end”. I never really understood why such a resilient apathy should exist in the face of the one method we have of changing our society. Something had gone wrong somewhere and I wanted to know what.

The general consensus seems to be that the youth of today are politically apathetic; after all, based on the 2010 figures for the general election even though there was a 7% increase in the numbers of 18-24 year olds voting (44%), it’s still less than half of all eligible young people compared with the overall turnout of 65%. Some would say that’s proof enough that young people just don’t care.

But if we look deeper into the heart of the matter, you find studies [1] [2] which show that young people are considerably more motivated by issues rather than party allegiances. In one particular study 67% said they were interested in national issues but only 38% said they were interested in ‘politics’. This has been shown first hand  in various protests around the country (tuition fees, Occupy protests). Most of my friends who previously said they weren’t interested in politics had an awful lot to say about the issues that directly affected them, as do we all really. It’s the age old “out of sight out of mind” problem; unless it directly affects us we stay quiet. Arguably, and sadly I’d say, our current politics cannot handle an issue-based approach, but is that a reason to ignore young people when it comes to the political process? As that’s what’s happening on a day to day basis.

Young people don’t really have a voice in this country; we’re expected to wait until being a fully grown adult before being listened to.” – Ben, 22, Student.

This may go some way to explaining why per percentage of eligible voters, more young people turn up to youth elections in comparison to general or local elections. By tapping into the issues relevant to us, through mediums we’re aware of and appreciate, youth-lead organisations are becoming a shining beacon in an altogether barren landscape. But even then, it’s the politicised youth talking to the politicised youth – and to be honest that’s quite a niche market. What about the students who don’t understand or care what a huge  role politics can play in their lives?

The majority of youth are completely alienated when it comes to coverage of politics in the media – the approaches used by those who seek to gain the youth vote, if any frankly, come across as either embarrassing or trite.” – Mark, 21, Student.

At the heart of this issue is a substantial lack in political education. The only form of political education received through the curriculum is through citizenship. Based on my sample size of 10 friends who had taken the class at secondary school, only 2 said they had learnt anything useful in relation to politics, and even then it was only who the parties were and the differences between left and right wing. I’ve met students who don’t even know how to vote let alone who to vote for or why.  Faced with such basic gaps in knowledge it may baffle you, just as much as it did me, that the government are thinking of scrapping citizenship altogether. I can’t help but wonder if we’re all being kept purposefully ignorant at this point. But crazy conspiracy theories aside…

This is where Bite the Ballot comes in, regardless of party politics; Bite the Ballot tries to bridge that educational gap. The aim being to go into schools and introduce every student to a baseline level of political understanding: how to register, how to vote, when to vote, where to find information about parties and issues, how to raise concerns with their local MP.  Once the realisation breaks through that everyone is affected by politics, and that politics isn’t some farfetched notion that only balding men in a fancy building are allowed to talk about, you start to see a change. Instead of thinking along the lines of “one vote is small relative to the country”, or “why should I care?” you start to hear “we’re all suffering with the same issues, why are we silent?” or “If we were all to use our vote, all at once, we can make something happen” – and it’s that kind of mindset that inspires change on a large scale. By just giving the voiceless masses a platform to discuss out loud the issues that affect them, we’re seeing a change in the way politics is perceived.

Registering to vote has never been prioritised highly for many young people, for many of the reasons previously discussed, but by once again bringing it to a level where it isn’t daunting or confusing, a real difference can be made. We’re holding the biggest ever Youth registration rally at the Ministry of Sound on April 14th. So to all the 16-24 year olds out there: If you don’t want to lose your vote and voice, come down to Ministry of Sound and spend 2 minutes completing a registration form. After that you’re free to relax with DJs, performances, comedians plus loads more at one of London’s most established venues. You will even get an opportunity to meet the politicians hoping to be Mayor of London so you can check them out for yourself and ask them direct why they should get your vote. So come see us on the day, bring friends, and make a difference for yourself and for London!

Find out more about the Ministry of Sound Youth Registration rally

Notes
[1]http://www.headsup.org.uk/content/mediaassets/pdf/Youth%20Citizenship%20Commission-HeadsUp%20Report.pdf

[2] http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/aio/27012612

[3] http://www.democraticlife.org.uk/

Above the Line Voting – A Response

Chris Terry, Research Officer, Electoral Reform Society

Last week I wrote about proposals for an ‘Above the line voting’ option for elections to a reformed Upper House. Quite simply we saw it as an opportunity to bring in appointment via the back door.

Since then we’ve received two thoughtful counter-arguments, one from Chris Prosser and one from Dr Alan Renwick, which deserve response.

Chris Prosser argues that above the line voting would not necessarily reduce independence as closed-list systems only increase party discipline due to politicians’ desire to be placed higher on the list at subsequent elections. As the elected Lords will be elected for a single non-renewable term, Prosser argues that independence will be maintained.

Yet the current House of Lords does not show many signs of independence despite never having had to stand for election. Between 1998 and 2010 Labour peers cast 98.9% of their votes in line with the then Labour government. The reason for this high support is that such peers are appointed on the basis of patronage, and parties, quite rationally, prefer to elevate their most loyal supporters to the Lords. The trouble with an above the line system is that parties can place these same loyal supporters at the top of the party list, and so the same practice of patronage would continue. By giving voters a choice within as well as between parties, pure STV allows voters to choose which party candidates they would most like to see in the Lords.

Both Renwick and Prosser argue that use of Above the Line voting in the Lords would not necessarily result in the extremely high levels of use seen in Australia. They point out that voters in Australia must preference ALL candidates and this can make Below the Line voting an arduous task as 80 or 90 candidates may be on the ballot paper.

This compulsory preferencing does not appear to be in to be in the proposals for Lords reform as they stand, and indeed we would oppose this restriction on voter’s choice. Renwick also compares to open-list systems, which similarly allow a voter to choose between voting for a party or a candidate. Renwick finds great variance between 20% choosing to vote for candidates in Austria to 90% in Brazil. However this misses a key difference between open lists and STV. In an open list system a vote for a party candidate is always a vote for the party, if the candidate is not elected the vote will still count towards the party’s final seat count. In STV preferences can ‘leak’. Voters may not preference all party candidates, or they may mix preferences between parties. This makes it likely that parties will campaign for voters to vote above the line, just as they do in Australia. On the whole parties will clearly prefer that voters use the above the line option, as there is the smallest likelihood of preferences leaking and the highest likelihood of rewarding their preferred candidates.

Renwick makes the point that a candidate would likely require more than half a quota of voters (likely to between 6.25% and 8.33% in the system designed for the Lords) to be elected out of order. This is a big ask for any candidate, and so while Renwick and Prosser may be correct that ‘below the line’ voting might be more popular in Britain than in Australia, in my opinion it still likely to result in significant party control.

Additionally the argument that above the line voting is needed to simplify voting by STV is unfounded. Voters can understand STV perfectly well. In the 2007 Scottish locals only 1.85% of STV ballots were spoilt compared to 4% of constituency and 2.4% of regional votes in the Scottish Parliamentary election. This was despite STV being a new and unfamiliar system and the use of two very different systems on that day.

The 2007 elections proved voters can use STV in quite sophisticated ways. The median voter cast three preferences. Due to there being only a couple of wards where a party ran three candidates this meant that the majority of voters cast preferences across party lines. Voters do not need above the line voting to make STV simpler for them.

The above the line proposal is contrary to the purpose of an elected Lords. An elected Lords should be as independent as possible, and it should represent the widest possible views. Above the line voting would replace a House of Lords filled on the basis of party patronage with one which de facto filled on the basis of party patronage.

Find out more about our campaign to reform the House of Lords.

The best of the worst of 2011′s local elections #2 – Excessive Majorities

In the second of our Best of the Worst of 2011′s Local elections series we examine the First Past the Post systems limitless capacity to deliver extremely distorted results.

In the 2011 elections in Eastleigh, the Lib Dems won 100% of the available seats on only 46.9% of the vote. In Bournemouth, the Conservatives won nearly 90% of the seats on only 38.6% of the vote.

Now all you armchair psephologists out there will probably know that disproportionality is measured using the Least Squares Index (also known as the Gallagher Index), which measures disproportionality between distributions of votes and seats.  Michael Gallagher, professor of politics at Trinity College, Dublin, has calculated this index for national parliamentary elections going back to 1945.

The most disproportionate general election result was Labour’s 2001 victory, where the party won 63% of seats on 40.7% of the national vote.

Sadly the 2011 local elections delivered 143 results, which were more disproportionate than Labour’s 2001 general election victory.

2011’s top 25 least proportional results:

In most of these 143 councils one party was given overall executive authority, despite the majority of voters opposing them.

Disproportional results inflict long-term damage on local democracy because they damage multi-party competition. As Vernon Bogdanor put it earlier this week:

A permanent one-party local authority is almost as offensive as a permanent one-party state.

And that’s because local parties need to win seats in order to remain viable, and these excessive majorities stifle dissenting voices. This can lead to the development of personal ‘fiefdoms’, where the leaders of dominant parties enjoy untrammeled control over their local authorities. Precisely this state of affairs encouraged the Scottish Labour Party to change the voting system for Scottish local elections.

The 2011results show that there is a strong case for making the same move in England. 2012’s results will inevitably build the case for change.

For more about last year’s local elections see English Local Elections 2011, Report and Analysis, by Andy White and Magnus Smidak.

Serving up a dog’s breakfast

Chris Terry,  Research Officer, Electoral Reform Society

The Urban Dictionary defines a dog’s breakfast as “an unappealing mixture of many things… a hodgepodge… a disorganized mess.”

And sadly that’s what the Joint Committee on Lords Reform is offering us with their recommendations on the voting system for the upper house.

As the Guardian reports today; the Committee are backing an ‘Open Preferential Voting System’ – as used in Australia. Voters will have the option to chose between candidates and parties. So much so good. That’s effectively what the Single Transferable Vote offers – and STV has been long regarded as the best fit for the Lords.

But the Committee wants to mix things up a bit – with an ‘above the line voting’ option.  Under this system the ballot paper would be split in two, and voters confronted with an ‘either or’ option. They could choose between backing individual candidates – voting ‘below the line’ – or a list of candidates compiled by party central office – voting ‘above the line’.

In Australia major parties actively discourage voters from voting ‘below the line’ saying that there is ‘no need’ or even ‘do not mark’ below the line:

Source: Antony Green’s Election Blog

As so many people use above the line voting, below the line voting also becomes a largely pointless exercise. The way that Above the Line voting works means that ‘surpluses’ travel down the party list. So if the Australian Labor Party gets enough votes for 2.5 quotas, the first two candidates on their list will get massive surpluses which transfer down to the third candidate.

Therefore only a large concentration of votes in a ‘below the line’ candidate, can change the order, and if 98% of ALP voters are voting using the Above the Line set-up then a below the line vote for an ALP candidate becomes practically worthless. The above the line system therefore creates a system where parties de facto have more control over candidature than in many semi-open list systems.

The Senate electoral system has become by default a closed party list system whereby voters vote for a party rather than candidates”

According to Marian Sawer of the Australian National University.

Depending on the variant of above the line voting used it can also discriminate heavily against independents. The system used in Federal Senate elections places independents ‘below the line’, so the only way for an independent to get elected is to form de facto parties. This is not true of some of the state-level systems, however.

Above the line voting therefore changes STV in such a way as to remove perhaps its most admirable attribute. STV allows voters to transfer votes both within and between parties. Voters can choose to first preference any candidate, and they can second preference any other even if the candidate is from another party. STV therefore promotes independence. Above the line voting, by contrast, allows parties to choose candidates on the basis of patronage, and the very issue with the current Lords is that is appointed on the basis of patronage.

STV gives voters almost total control, above the line voting places control directly into the hands of political parties.

We think that if you hold the power to decide how Britain is run, you should be elected by us, the British public. That’s democracy.

This dog’s dinner of a proposal is a cynical attempt to sneak appointments in through the back door.

Bargaining on equality: a challenge to the trade unions?

Jess Garland, Policy and Research Officer at the Electoral Reform Society

“If we want to see women in positions of power in society – how do we achieve it?”

This was the challenge we set to the audience at the Unions21 debate: Women, Power and Trade Unions.

The debate, part of the Unions 21 conference on Friday, was convened to discuss a new piece of research by the Electoral Reform Society, conducted in partnership with Unions21, examining the role of women within the power structures of trade unions.

Women hold the top position in only a quarter of TUC affiliated trade unions yet make up over 50 per cent of the membership. Just as in Westminster, women in trade unions are not being represented at the decision-making table.

A key theme of the discussion was the impact of austerity measures on women workers and women’s representation. Geraldine Healy, professor of employment relations at Queen Mary University, expressed concern that, “In times of austerity, equality bargaining becomes an add-on, competing with other priorities. There is a danger that equality bargaining issues are seen as a luxury item in difficult economic times.” This concern was reflected by those on the conference floor who felt that there was simply not enough time to drive forward equality issues with other negotiating priorities.

Katie Ghose, Chief Executive of the Electoral Reform Society suggested that unions need to look at cultural as well as structural barriers to women’s progress and to focus on talent, “It’s about not letting talent go to waste. Companies are starting to wake up to the fact that having boards which reflect their customers is good for business. Unions too can derive strength from their diversity.”

The role of quotas was discussed widely with general consensus that affirmative action needs to be taken and that  there must be a will to address this issue at the top. Nan Sloane, Director of the Centre for Women and Democracy, stressed the need to understand what works, “Quotas are not an end in themselves, but if you want decision-making structures to look like the society they make decisions for, how else can you achieve your objective?”

Sue Ferns, Chair of Unions 21 asked the audience to reflect on the correlation between the gender pay gap and lack of women’s representation in unions. Nan Sloane noted that the gender pay gap for part-time workers is double that for full-time workers; an issue unions had started to address but “not enthusiastically”.

Conference attendees from across a range of unions discussed their personal experiences and following the discussion were asked to come forward with their own recommendations which will form part of the ongoing research.

The union movement holds democracy and representation at its core yet faces similar challenges to achieving representational equality as our political institutions. This new piece of research by the Electoral Reform Society will look at how unions can address the representational deficit and in doing so provide learning for our other democratic organisations.

The Electoral Reform Society is part of the campaign to achieve 50:50 men and women across all of our political institutions. To find out more visit www.countingwomenIN.org

The best of the worst of 2011’s local elections

Yesterday Ed Miliband fired the starter’s pistol on this year’s local election season. On May 3^rd we’ll see the results.

The sad thing is we already know what we can expect. It happens every year – voters with little to no control over who speaks for them in their own town halls.

Yesterday we heard from Vernon Bogdanor on the problems at the heart of local democracy in the UK. As a part of a short series of posts, we look back at the worst 2011 had to offer for English local government.

Prepare yourselves for more of the same.

#1 Uncontested Seats

In England many councillors get ‘elected’ without a single vote being cast.

Some local contests are now so uncompetitive – so ‘safe’ – that opponents have long ceased fielding candidates. These uncontested seats are the most obvious sign of a breakdown in the democratic process. In these seats, councillors are elected unopposed and voters are not presented with a choice.

Last year 24 local authorities, at least one in 10 councillors, were elected unopposed. The worst offender was Eden District Council in Cumbria, where exactly half of all councillors won their seats uncontested. A third of winning candidates for East Dorset District Council were elected unopposed.

Here are the runners and riders from 2011:

Uncontested seats are the most extreme manifestation of the more widespread lack of electoral competition on show in most local authorities. But there are countless other examples of seats being contested by only two candidates, or where parties stand ‘paper’ candidates who don’t campaign, and who don’t expect to win.

Voters in an uncontested ward have no chance to express approval or disapproval for a particular candidate or party. Their representative on the council wins his or her seat by default. The basic purpose of elections – to hold our representatives to account – is defeated.

So can things be different?

On May 3^rd Scottish voters will vote in their local elections.  But Scottish local authorities moved from First Past the Post (FPTP) to the Single Transferable Vote (STV) in 2007, and uncontested seats have become a thing of the past.

Candidates were thin on the ground in Scotland’s last FPTP local elections in 2003; with the average voter not even getting a choice of all of the four big parties. In 61 wards there wasn’t even an election.  But STV made these contests genuinely competitive.

In 2007 the average voter had more than twice as many choices as in 2003 and the number of candidates in Scotland should climb even higher this year. Some voters in the Highlands had the option of choosing party representatives for the first time, while people in Ayrshire had the chance to back independents. All voters could choose their favourite candidates without fear of splitting the vote and letting their least favourite candidate in.

That’s the kind of choice English voters deserve.

For more about last year’s local elections see English Local Elections 2011, Report and Analysis, by Andy White and Magnus Smidak.

The Trouble with Local Democracy

By Professor Vernon Bogdanor, Fellow of Brasenose College, University of Oxford.

Localism has become today’s catchword. Politicians compete with each other to proclaim their belief in the dispersal of power and the need to strengthen local government.

However, not much has been done to secure this aim, and local democracy remains in a distinctly unhealthy state.

Turnout in local elections is generally between 30% and 40% – the lowest by far in Western Europe; and, of those who do vote, many support the same party locally as they do in national elections, treating local elections, not as a means of passing a verdict on their local council, but as a plebiscite on the government’s record.

That indeed is how the results are presented in the media, where national, not local, politicians are asked to comment on the outcome. Local elections have become miniature General Elections and because of this many voters regard local councillors as party emissaries, meaning independent-minded people are deterred from seeking election. Local councillors are seen as representing not ‘us’ but ‘them’.

It is because local government seems so little valued that national governments of both political parties have been able to take its powers away with so little protest.

As a consequence, Britain has become a profoundly centralised society.

While centralisation is a product of many complex cultural as well as institutional factors, there is little doubt that the First Past the Post system undermines local democracy. Under First Past the Post, many local government wards and many local councils are permanently safe for one party.

Such unbalanced majorities are distinctly undemocratic. There has only been one Parliament in the 20^th century (1931) in which the opposition was almost totally obliterated: the government holding 554 of the 615 seats on just two-thirds of the vote (a two-to-one plurality in votes leading to a nine-to-one majority in seats). However, in local government, such results are commonplace. To be effective, local authorities, like governments, need a lively opposition to keep them on their toes and scrutinise what they are doing. A permanent one-party local authority is almost as offensive as a permanent one-party state.

These occurrences are not random. They tend to benefit the Conservatives in rural areas and Labour in the cities, so exaggerating, rather than mitigating, social and geographical divisions. They make Britain appear a more divided country than in fact it is, because the electoral system deprives the Labour minority in the countryside and the Conservative minority in the cities, of an effective political voice.

In many local authorities, there may seem little point in voting, since the outcome, under First Past the Post, is a pre-ordained landslide. That is one main reason why so many local government wards are uncontested. Where a ward is safe, opposition parties can feel it’s a waste of time to put up a candidate. The consequence of this is that if you’re a Labour supporter in a Conservative safe seat or a Conservative in a Labour safe seat, you come to be totally disenfranchised.

In national elections, the ‘wrong’ side won in three of the 26 general elections in the 20^th century – those of 1929, 1951 and February 1974. In the 2011 English local elections, the wrong side won in 15 local authorities, so that, in these authorities, voters were not given the outcome for which they asked.

The First Past the Post system is currently used for local government elections only in England and Wales. In Northern Ireland, the Single Transferable Vote has been used since 1973, while, in Scotland, the Single Transferable Vote (STV) was adopted for local government elections in 2007.

The outcome of these local elections under STV show a striking contrast to results in England, and to results in the 2003 elections in Scotland conducted by First Past the Post before the move to STV.

In 2003, Labour had won 71 of the 79 seats in Glasgow on just 48% of the vote, and had won Edinburgh despite winning less than 28% of the vote. In Renfrewshire; the SNP had won control of the council despite being outpolled by Labour. No such anomalies occurred in the 2007 Scottish elections under STV and there were no uncontested seats, while in 2003 when there had been 61. There was also a 9.5% increase in valid votes cast, and councils hitherto thought to be no-go areas for particular parties were opened up. The Scottish local elections, therefore, yielded much more genuinely representative local government than local elections in England.

Under the Single Transferable Vote, the voter, instead of casting her vote with an X, ranks candidates in order of preference; 1, 2, 3 etc. The system thus combines a primary and an election with no need for a separate primary in which fewer are likely to participate than in a General Election and with participation in primaries sometimes being restricted to party members.

Multimember wards enable voters to distribute preferences across parties if they so wish, and to discriminate amongst members of their favoured party. A voter can therefore choose between various candidates from her favoured party, or across parties, on the basis of who has been, or might prove to be, the more effective councillor. In single-member wards, by contrast, there is no way in which the elector can distinguish between effective and less effective councillors. Effective councillors are doomed to defeat along with the less effective solely because the party to which they belong is unpopular at national level.

It is perhaps not for the government to decide upon the best system for each local authority, but for local voters themselves. Under the Localism Bill 5% of registered electors in every local authority area have the right to secure a referendum on any matter within the legal powers of their authority. It would be natural to extend this principle by allowing for 5% of registered electors to secure a referendum on the electoral system for their authority.

As the parties begin to kick of their campaigns for the local elections this May it will be interesting to see whether the same old story of safe and uncontested seats starts to shows itself. What is clear is that electoral reform is an essential precondition for localism and for making local government a more effective part of the constitution.

For more about last year’s local elections see English Local Elections 2011, Report and Analysis, by Andy White and Magnus Smidak.

Constitutional conundrums resolved?

Juliet Swann, Campaigns and Research Officer, Electoral Reform Society Scotland

We are hearing rumours that the UK Government has been in closed door discussions with the devolved administrations to try and reach a compromise situation that might resolve the various constitutional wranglings that haunt British democracy.

From the West Lothian Question to a separate Welsh legal system, ongoing murmurings about an English Parliament to Cornish independence, it seems that the powers that be have decided enough is enough and a solution must be found.

Several options are under consideration, all of which recognise that the Houses of Parliament at Westminster are somewhat intimidating to many members of the public, and that they have a tainted history – from Guy Fawkes to the recent ‘cash for influence’ scandal. Influential voices are therefore pushing for the closure of the Houses of Parliament (to be re-opened as a museum of democracy) and for MPs to meet at another location in the UK.

We understand that the favoured option is to refurbish the abandoned GoodYear tyre factory in Washington, Tyne and Wear, with a suggested name of ‘The White House’.

Other possibilities include transforming an abandoned shopping centre outside Reading into the new parliamentary facility. It has previously been used for a Zombie Shopping Mall Experience.

Manchester is also throwing its hat into the ring, offering to create a state of the art building out of Spinningfields car park.

To ensure that the general public feel ‘ownership’ of the new Parliament, officials are in discussion with Channel 4’s George Clarke, host of ‘The Restoration Man’ to develop a documentary television programme where George visits each site, discusses the architectural and practical possibilities, and speaks with a site champion as to why their favoured option should be preferred. The series will culminate with a live phone, text and twitter vote deciding the final choice, hashtag #movethehouse.

Katie Ghose, Chief Executive of the Electoral Reform Society said:

“We welcome this concerted joint effort to resolve the UK’s constitutional conundrums. It is exciting to hear that such a novel approach is being taken to help reconnect people with politics.”

Any initiative that seeks to bring democracy closer to the people and improve participatory politics deserves fulsome praise”

 
To find out more about the ‘Move the House’ project  follow #movethehouse or visit www.movethehouse.co.uk

Behind the excuses and the finger pointing – the bitter pill of party funding

Katie Ghose is Chief Executive of the Electoral Reform Society

So here we are again. Once more the headlines boom with a brand new ‘cash-for influence’ scandal.

Peter Cruddas, millionaire and Tory donor come hapless Tory treasurer, has been caught in an old fashioned sting operation by the Sunday Times, claiming that £250,000 will buy you access to the Prime Minister and other members of Tory high Command.

Cruddas doesn’t mince his words, in return for joining the Tory donor ‘premier league’ you get to ask the Prime Minister “practically any question [you] want”, allowing you to pick up “key bits of information” and make suggestions which will be fed to the “Policy Committee in No 10” (a committee Downing St says does not exist).

All this is very titillating but as the newest explosion of scandal in a long line of eye-wateringly similar scandals, we have to ask ourselves: will anything now change as a result?

While the Conservatives are busy washing their hands and crying their innocence and Labour are making no effort to rein in their gleeful finger pointing, the combined noise they create is distracting from two obvious truths:

1. This is not an isolated incident – whatever the Conservatives say

2. This is not only a Tory party problem – whatever Labour may say

Let’s look at the depressingly plentiful evidence. Back in 1994 Conservative MPs Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith were involved in the notorious ‘Cash for Questions’ row and in 2006 we had the Labour Party’s ‘cash for peerages’ scandal. In 2009 four Labour life peers were exposed for offering to  make amendments to legislation for £120,000 and in 2008 the largest ever donor to the Liberal Democrats; Michael Brown, was convicted in abstentia of two counts of theft, one of furnishing false information and one of perverting the course of justice. Most recently in 2010 a series of high profile politicians across the party spectrum agreed to use their political influence in return for payments of between £3,000 and £5,000 from a fictitious lobbying firm.

So what is to be done? Recent discussions around reforming party funding to mitigate against the undue influence of rich donors on British politics have gone no-where. The debate has sunk into petty partisan squabbles with no party willing to accept measures which may dent their own income.

For any agreement to be worth the paper it’s printed on the bigger parties will have to accept a donations cap and Labour will have to agree for this to apply to Union donations. In their recommendations the Committee on Standards in Public Life proposed a cap of £10,000 and Conservatives have signaled they may accept a cap of £50,000 which is still ludicrously high.

Quite apart from its openness to abuse the current system is principally flawed; allowing parties focus on a few wealthy individuals rather than trying to attract support from a wider base which would be much healthier from a democratic point of view.

It’s also clear that something needs to be done to slow the ‘arms race’ in election spending, both to reduce overall spending and to manage the advantage that the bigger parties have over their smaller rivals. An election spending cap would be incredibly difficult to monitor and enforce however and it would be essential that any restrictions were backed up by full transparency and enforcement.

Ultimately we want politicians and parties to be answerable to us; the British public. No-one through dint of their wealth should be able to buy a greater say in how our country is run.

Clearly we need to stop shying away from the elephant in the room, the only guaranteed way of ensuring the British voter comes first. We need to look seriously at state funding.

In this time of austerity politicians and public alike will be uncomfortable with the idea of the tax-payer stumping up the cash but as Mary Ann Sieghart asks in the Independent today ‘Is 50p a year really too much to end this corruption?’. Is the cost of a packet of crisps a year really too much to ask for the security of a government without backhanders?

Admittedly the recent ‘millionaire’s Budget’ begs the question: can’t a government that can find room in the budget to cut the 50p tax rate find some change down the back of its sofa to invest in protecting British democracy?, but let’s not expect miracles.

This new disgrace will blow over, as all the rest did, but public trust in politicians is on a downward spiral and will simply not take an infinite number of future ‘cash-for…’ scandals. It’s time for the parties to grow-up and accept their responsibilities. No-one likes to have their income cut (just ask post-Budget pensioners) and it will certainly be a bitter pill for the parties to swallow but swallow it they must. Britain’s democracy deserves that much.

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