According to this article our Political Parties spend around £100M between them each year and at election time the Parties are each entitled to spend £20M based on rules agreed between them. These sums are clearly obscene, especially in a context where Government Policy is leading to a massive expansion of foodbanks and where the coalition is attempting to silence charities in the year before any election in case they influence its outcome. With little over a year to go until the 2015 election I believe it is time for a major rethink, although it is clear that mainstream Politicians will not support this. This is not to suggest that Parties should be publicly funded (although that already happens to the tune of £7M each year) but rather that their spending limits should be a great deal less than £20M during the election period.

My own experience of elections is very modest, I have taken part in two ‘public’ elections. The first in 1979 as a Sabbatical Officer at Brighton Polytechnic when I recall spending only a few pounds out of my grant on duplicating documents (no photocopiers in those days) and on train fares to Eastbourne Campus. Things were similar in 2012 when I stood as Police and Crime Commissioner. I spent most of the budget I had on a whacking £5,000 deposit (with the help of a number of friends) and during the election itself £370 on photocopying, petrol and the hire of meeting spaces. The Lib Dems and UKIP outspent me fourfold, spending just less than £1,500 each. Labour proved to have more buying power with a massive £4,620 spent on their campaign. It should be noted that these sums are only part of the equation, these parties also have varying numbers of local party members willing to deliver leaflets and in some cases man phone lines to encourage known supporters to turn out to vote. However the Conservatives emerged with a budget of £37,000 of which one single donation came from the Chichester Constituency Association who managed to generate £5,000, more than any other party or candidate had to spend in their entirety. Yet these sums are miniscule when compared to the sum we were allowed to spend under rules drawn up by the same people who set financial limits for General Elections. According to the Electoral Commission, we were entitled to spend just below £220,000 each.

At the meeting in Brighton on Thursday night, one of the justifications put forward by Graham Cox for the new Lobbying Law was the concern the parties have that charities and lobbying groups will target their money on trying to change the election outcome in target seats. Unlike Graham and his party colleagues I do not believe that money or even human activity such as door knocking determines the outcome of elections, although of course such things clearly have an impact. If it was that simple I would have come a very poor 5th in the election by a margin of 100:1 compared to the Conservatives. In reality if the amount spent by each candidate in our election was divided by the number of votes cast, the cost for each Conservative vote would be 62p, each Labour vote would have cost 11p, Lib Dems 7p, UKIP 5p and each vote for me 0.9p. Our electoral system is determined by Parties that have got used to outspending each other and believe that this is the only way that elections can be won.

A similar problem used to exist within the Churches. They began ringing Bells from large Bell towers so that the workers in the fields would know when to stop their work and pray, three times a day, as well as to ensure that people knew that services were starting and for them to hurry along to take their place in their pews. This was in an age when watches and clocks were not common place. As the number of churches grew, the need for Bells and Bell towers placed a huge burden on donors. Eventually after a few Churches were built without Bells, they all realised that the ‘success’ of the Churches actually had no bearing on the number of Bells or the size of the Bell Towers. We need our Political Parties to wake up to the reality of their own limited thinking, and in doing so, we might discover that Independent voices and small Parties will emerge that could actually revitalise our democracy.