Cash for Peerages

17.07.06

“Fancy the Lords? Peerage? That’ll be £1 million”. I doubt Tony Blair has ever had such a crass conversation.

Yet when so many large political donors miraculously end up in Parliament’s second chamber, people are suspicious. And perceptions can be as important as reality, as the Prime Minister himself said back in 1997.

Whether or not police investigations result in charges, we need reform - of how we fund political parties and of the House of Lords.

There is a strong case for placing tougher limits both on what individuals or groups can give to a party, and on what parties can spend. While some limits exist now, taken together they make little difference in practice. Thus, limits on spending in a local constituency election are circumvented by some parties with massive national spending.

We should instead create a system where parties need large numbers of small donations to survive – forcing them to engage with voters, and so adding to the health of our democracy, not undermining it, as the present system does.

While membership of the House of Lords is decided by patronage, some will always try to buy their way in. Why should the leaders of all the main political parties have that power? The solution of giving voters that power, in an election, has even more to recommend it, after this latest round of “cash for peerages”.
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