According to a report in yesterdays Independent newspaper, in the year before the next General Election, our Political Parties are awash with money. That is not quite how the news was reported but if as the article reports, in the last year the Tories have pocketed £4.8M, Labour £3.2M and the Lib Dems £1.3M there seems to be plenty of money for them to run their organisations. This £9.3M comes on top of the £7M they currently receive from taxpayers. This makes a total budget of £16.3M although it is only a small sum compared to the money likely to be spent during the election next year. At the same time the Government continues to reduce the money being spent on essential services in the communities where we live. If the funding for Political Parties was treated in the same manner as we treat income based benefits to individuals, every pound that they received from a donor, would be offset by a reduction of a pound in their grant from the Government. That would allow the exchequer to claw back all or most of the £7M, money that could be used to reduce the national debt or perhaps be used to extend the campaign to encourage young people to register as electors that I wrote about on Friday.

I know I am not alone in feeling very uncomfortable about the cosy arrangements between Political Parties and wealthy individuals, particularly where their businesses are the donors. Would some of these donations be made if the individuals concerned were obliged to make donations to Political Parties from earned income? We have had lots of hints about discussions on the idea of limiting donations to a sum such as £5,000 per donor per year, yet at present David Cameron is fully justified in schmoozing some of the men and women behind hedge funds as they can currently write cheques for unlimited amounts. The current arrangements mean that at best our public funding secures only 43% of the attention of these men and their organisations, whilst  the other 57% is going to be lavished on the rich men and women who are bankrolling the parties.

Alongside the need to consider the integrity of our Political Parties, there is also a need to ensure that the lives of the men and women who are leading and indeed members of the Political Parties are lived in an open and accountable manner. This weekend at least two stories have been covered by our papers. Firstly the actions of Maria Miller and her £90,000 claim for housing costs over a 4 year period for a home that her parents may or may not have lived in (something specifically prohibited by the rules). The story was published in the Telegraph and it seems to show that once again, the fourth estate is running ahead of our Parliamentary processes. The second story relates to claims by Andrew Lansley for Hotel nights in Westminster even though he has a home only a mile away. This story appeared in the Mirror and is a great deal less clear than the one concerning Maria Miller. There is no reason to assume that these are isolated cases, nor that the problems are limited to one party!

Put together these stories do not provide a very strong encouragement for people to vote in the next election, much less to stand for any of these Political Parties as candidates. Listening to the comments this morning from the Lib Dems preparing the ground for a new coalition with Labour whilst they are still in a coalition with the Conservatives simply adds to the whole tacky mess. We clearly need a commitment from these parties to do as they have faithfully promised before to put their houses in order on Party donations as well as on personal funding for MPs and Ministers. Perhaps until they are able to deliver on this, we need to see a number of people like Martin Bell, willing to stand as candidates in the election, opposing the corruption in our political systems, just as he initially opposed the corrupt practices by individual MPs.