Oral questions: Electoral Commission powers to prevent political parties, and associated promotional activities, from receiving funding from outside of the UKLord Blunkett (Labour)
Does the Minister accept that there can be problems with very large donations to political parties, whether they may originate from abroad or be clearly from within the UK, and that the only way to prevent undue influence on political parties is to ban company donations and have a sensible cap on the size of all other donations? Does she then agree that political parties would still be able to campaign effectively if existing public funding was redistributed—for example, from the £100 million spent by the Government in the last two general elections on distributing candidates’ election addresses—and given to the parties to spend as they saw fit?
Lord Rennard in the House of Lords addresses political party funding, highlighting concerns over large donations and their potential undue influence.