Transparently still in trouble
- 14 Jan 08, 10:07 AM
A simple principle would, we were told, clean up politics. That principle was "transparency". In other words if voters can see who gives a politician or party substantial sums of money we can judge for ourselves whether the donor's got anything for his money. Sounds simple although, in practice, has proved anything but.
The story about the half a million pounds in donations given to George Osborne rests, in part, on the fact that transparency is policed in two different ways. It's the job of the to publish and police the list of donations for elections - both internal party contests and those between parties. It's the job of the to publish the lists of donations - cash or in kind - to individual Members of Parliament.
The Tories registered the half a million with the Commission but not with the Register. Why? They say that this was because the money was given to the party centrally and, even though the donors asked for the money to be channelled to Mr Osborne's office, it was spent by party HQ and not by him directly. Now the Tories have asked the parliamentary authorities to clear up what they claim is confusion about how the Register works. Critics will say that he should have registered the money - if only on the precautionary principle.
Peter Hain's problem is very different. He did not give the Commission or the Register any details of the over 拢100,000 in donations to his deputy leadership campaign until last week and admits that he only looked into his own accounts after the row about Labour's secret donations from . His defence is that his campaign was incompetent and that he's now been open about that and apologised for producing his accounts late. What he won't do, however, is answer questions about why thousands of pounds were channelled to his campaign via a think tank that's never done any thinking. The suspicion must be that, until the Abrahams affair broke, the intention was to use the think tank to channel some funds anonymously. A suspicion, however, is not a fact.
So, all now rests on what the Electoral Commission and parliamentary authorities say or do. Gordon Brown made that clear in an this morning. The prime minister praised his minister - "Peter has done a great job and it would be a great loss if he had to leave the government. He took his eye off the ball and he has apologised" - before preparing the ground to bury him if necessary - "The matter must rest with the authorities, who will look at these matters. It would be my expectation that he will carry on in government."
PS. The principle of transparency may be simple but the operation of the rules is anything but. If politicians want fewer alleged scandals in a system which they insist is better than most they'd be well advised to simplify them fast. I investigated this in the radio documentary that I made about party funding which was broadcast just before Christmas. Unfortunately it's no longer available to listen to but you can read about it .
