In a recent Independent article journalist Andrew Grice interviewed Sir Christopher Kelly and discussed how money and other power levers are corrupting the political process. Entitled “Big money is poisoning British democracy, warns anti-sleaze watchdog” it focused on Westminster and the state of the national parties, pointing out that unless the funding for party politics is reformed, public confidence which is already at a very low-level could collapse altogether. The figures that Christopher Kelly has in mind run into many Millions. He suggests that the taxpayer will need to fund the parties by some £32M in order to prise away the fingers of the union barons on the one hand and wealthy individuals and big business on the other. Clearly these sums will be hard to justify, but perhaps the further deterioration of public support will force this issue even more into the open.

In the context of a Multi Million pound proposal a few thousand pounds must seem almost irrelevant, however I write following the publication on Thursday of the financial returns of the Police and Crime Commissioner elections which were held on 15th November 2012. I have only seen the figures for the Sussex election in which I personally stood. It will be fascinating to see the picture from across the country. Just as big money is poisoning politics nationally, I would suggest that small sums are doing the same sort of damage at a more local level. The following table indicates the money expended by the five candidates including myself and the number of votes cast.

I confess that the financial extent of my own campaign was more limited than I had originally hoped, however having made a decision to stand and found individuals willing to assist me in providing some of the £5,000 deposit to fight the election (Nick Herbert suggested publicly this was to dissuade unsuitable people from standing!) I failed to secure very much additional funding. From the outset I put a clear statement on my website that one of the principles of my campaign was that I did not believe that our democracy should be based on how much funding was available – in effect that we must not allow our democracy to be bought. It meant that I needed to resort to a different form of campaigning and whilst I did not win, under the circumstances third place was very respectable.

Clearly Katy was the best resourced of all of the candidates. About half of the money she spent came from her own pocket (a similar proportion to my own campaign). However apart from her own funds, the largest single donation, £5,000, came from Chichester Conservatives. This one group raised more money than the Labour Candidate spent during his campaign, and substantially more than UKIP and the Lib Dem campaigns combined. It is impossible to tell how much better any of the four runners-up could have done if they had each received even one donation of £5,000. Speaking for my own campaign it would have dramatically increased the number of leaflets I was able to print and distribute and provided resources for many additional meetings. I spoke to many  people who suggested they would not vote for a candidate who had not been bothered to contact them in one way or another (including through a leaflet).

I don’t believe that the political discourse in this country is well served by our political parties in their current format. I certainly do not support the idea of funding the parties to the tune of £32M, and would welcome an end to the corrupting impact of the existing large donors. At a local level setting an overall spending limit to the Sussex PCC election of £220,000 was clearly obscene, and could have only been proposed by people who are totally out of touch with what I think democracy is supposed to be about. My personal judgement is that setting an upper spending limit of say £10,000 or £5,000 would have avoided an already dominant political party from exerting even more advantage in what was supposed to have been a free and fair election. No doubt others would set a different limit, but I think that the huge disparity in spending power between the parties, let alone with Independent candidates such as myself demands a radical rethink before these elections take place again in May 2016. It is stating the obvious to point out that leaving such decision-making to governments run by political parties simply reduces the likelihood of a radical change to this bias and advantage.