Chancellor’s plan to slash Short money announced in autumn statement would be ‘deeply damaging for accountability’

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

George Osborne’s attempts to slash state funding for opposition parties is bad news for democracy as it increases reliance on donors and raises the potential for corruption, the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) has warned.

After the government announced a 19% funding cut for Labour and other opposition parties, Katie Ghose, the chief executive of the ERS, said the move was a step in the wrong direction and could be “deeply damaging for accountability”.

“The whole party funding system is a complete mess as it is, but this measure risks making it worse,” she said. “By removing public money from the mix, this cut risks making parties even more reliant on big donors – with all the potential for corruption that entails.

“Unilateral moves like this risk being seen as overtly partisan, and could make it even harder for parties to get round the table and thrash out a deal on the real problem: their over-reliance on big donors’ money. Until we see a cap on donations and a lower spending limit, taking away public money from opposition parties will just make things worse.”

The funding, known as Short money, is named after the former minister Edward Short, who devised the system in 1974 to compensate opposition parties for not having access to Whitehall resources.

Osborne said in the autumn statement that opposition parties should lose money in line with the 19% cuts to Whitehall spending. Allocations will then be frozen in cash terms for the rest of the parliament, removing the automatic increase in line with inflation. Policy development grant allocations will also be reduced by a similar proportion.

Labour is set to lose more than £1m under the plans, while the SNP is set for a cut of more than £200,000 and the Lib Dems could lose around £100,000.

Osborne will now either have to get the proposal through a committee of MPs on which the Speaker sits and the Tories have no majority, or a vote of the whole House of Commons.

Chris Bryant, the shadow leader of the House of Commons, said it was “despicable rigging of the political system” and urged the chancellor to think again.

“We were generous to the Conservatives when we were in power because good government needs a strong opposition,” he said. “I think there will be Conservatives who will also be thinking that what goes around comes around.”

Bryant said he would be more inclined to think favourably about the proposal if the Conservatives were reducing the cost of their own special advisers.

The government said Short money for all opposition parties had risen in cost from £6.9m in 2010-11 to £9.3m in 2015-16.

Labour pointed out that in the meantime the cost of special advisers for Conservative government ministers has gone up from £5.9m in 2009 to £8.4m last year.



The Lib Dems also criticised the move, calling it “an attack on democracy”.

“While on the one hand the government wants to cut Short money, they are spending £289m this year alone on spinners and marketing,” a spokesman said. “This proposal is a purely partisan move that will backfire on the government disastrously.”

The Green party accused Osborne of making “efforts to limit the democratic scrutiny of his austerity agenda”.



“Short money contributes to the legislature’s ability to properly hold the executive to account and put forward alternatives to government policy,” a spokesman said. “To parties such as the Green party, who do not receive large donations from multinational companies, Short money helps our parliamentarians to carry out scrutiny of the government.

“The Conservative government’s efforts to hamstring opposition parties is an assault on democracy and we will do all we can to resist these changes.”