News from the New Party

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Yet another funding scandal

Even as Peter Hain trundles glumly into the sunset to "clear his name", now that the Metropolitan Police have been called in to investigate his funding irregularities, yet another cabinet minister is dragged into the spotlight.

There is still some confusion around the £3,000 donation to Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, apparently received via an intermediary, and three other donations which appear not to have been declared entirely correctly, However, the refusal of this issue to go away, as one senior Labour Party figure after another has become implicated in funding scandals in one way or another, is perhaps more serious than the actual details of the latest case.

The strong implication is that Labour ministers and other senior figures either do not put a high priority on adhering strictly to the rules (to put it charitably), or that administrative incompetence is at an unacceptably high level. Neither possibility is tolerable.

Notwithstanding the current legal investigations, the Prime Minister should make clear that any further funding irregularities occurring in the future should result in the immediate sacking if the offender is a government minister or employee of the Labour Party. Other party leaders should make a similar commitment.

There is no point bringing in new laws on party funding when politicians show little enough intention to obey the existing laws. What we need now is not legislation, but compliance - and where compliance fails, enforcement.

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Yet another funding scandal