Monday, March 20, 2006

My advice being taken?

There should be a £50,000 limit on donations to political parties and a ban on loans, says David Cameron.

The Tory leader is also pushing for new state funding of political parties in the wake of Labour's loans controversy.

Parties with MPs would get £1.20 from the taxpayer for every vote they won at the last general election - plus an annual payment of 60p per vote won.

That would mean Labour and the Tories getting more than £30m and the Lib Dems about £20m over a four year term.

The Tories are considering cutting the number of MPs to fund the plans.

They say the number of MPs could be reduced from 646 to less than 600. The costs of government special advisers and regional government would also be cut to pay for the changes.

Mr Cameron says he also wants the limit on each party's spending at elections to be cut from £20m to £15m.

His proposals follow Labour's admission it received £14m in undeclared loans.

The Tories are demanding a total ban on loans unless they are from "financial institutions on fully commercial terms".

Looks like thay are taking part of my advice. A couple of news posts ago I said there should be a limit of £50,000 on donations. I don't believe taxpayers should have to fund political parties by the tens of millions.

I also don't believe there should be a limit on party spending if the max donations are £50,000 and I will only support reducing the number of MPs if all constituencies have the same number of people in them unlike now where Labour candidates need the least number of votes to win and the Lib Dems need the most to win which is obviously unfair for the Lib Dems.

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