Given the frequency with which some Politicians refer to the things that they are told on the doorsteps they visit, one would assume that most of them would be keen to respond to our views on matters of significance, even recognising that our democracy is not based on a system of delegation! I confess that I was once door stepped by an incumbent MP and because I supported his work I had nothing contentious to say to him. I was not prepared with a list of issues to raise. However I do have strong views on certain matters and can see that if I was ever questioned about these in a structured manner, I would give my views much more objectively than if I was talking to an MP or a Candidate calling to deliver a leaflet. Yesterday I came across a survey that was recently carried out by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and the questions they have released are on the subject of Party Funding, a subject that I am concerned about. The source of this information is the Electoral Reform Society and the link is here.

The survey was carried out in late Februrary and GQR contacted 1402 people across a range of backgrounds and geographies which I understand is a scientifically representative sample and certainly more representative that knocking on even 1000 doorsteps in one constituency.

According to the survey 75% of us believe that Big Financial Donors have too much influence on Party Political decisions. In other words despite the use of the doorstep evidence when speaking on camera, it is actually the cosy dining room that we believe really makes up the mind of these politicians. That said 5% of people do not agree and 20% of us neither agree or disagree. Because the question is a bit short on specifics a subsequent question is about the size of donations. “To prevent corruption, no one should be able to give more than £5,000 in any one year?” and in answer to that 67% of us agree and a mere 9% disagree. These results are very helpful. They happen to chime with my own views, having fought an election where one candidate outspent the other 4 candidates combined by a factor of 5:1. Whilst elections are not solely a matter of finances, it is clear that the way in which money is used to print information etc can distort the extent to which people feel the candidates are interested in them.

With a year to go until the General Election there is still time for the Parties to include a radical commitment to electoral reform in their manifesto. Indeed there is a year ahead where the Government has made it clear it is not planning significant pieces of legislation, in part it says to allow back benchers to debate issues that matter to them. I wonder how many MPs would be willing to use the next year to bring the issue of Party Political funding into the debating chamber of the House of Commons? Perhaps if a few of the MPs who like to listen to rich donors could spend a few moments looking at this survey they might find out one of the reasons why they and their colleagues are so unpopular!