Show us the money (and its donors)…
Hugo Swire announced the NIO consultation on the exceptional confidentiality provision that only applies to donations to the northern political parties.
The current arrangement has had it’s expiry date shoved out from 31st October 2010 to 1st March 2011 by the Control of Donations and Regulations of Loans Etc. (Extension of the Prescribed Period) (Northern Ireland) Order 2010. In brief, parties must provide financial information to the Electoral Commission – it just isn’t published.
While the consultation only began on the 3rd August (and continues to October 25th), it hasn’t got much airtime, although today the BBC flagged differences of opinion between the DUP and Sinn Féin on the issue.
The DUP are taking the same line as 2005 regarding the primacy of security concerns over releasing the names and addresses of donors. While the convenience of this for the DUP (given how 2009 ended) is an obvious opportunity for a few cheap laughs at their expense, the 2009 end of year accounts provided to the Electoral Commission by the DUP, SDLP, Sinn Féin and UUP are all worth reading.
While you would need a good sense of profit/loss/cashflow analysis to follow the accounting, it appears that the UUP raised a mammoth £307,797 in memberships fees, as opposed to £36,950 by the SDLP, £18,795 by the DUP and, apparently none by Sinn Féin. However, on the donations front Sinn Féin lead the way with £462,856 followed by the DUP on £126,211 and SDLP on £83,672. The UUP appear not to get any donations, until you go through the footnotes and find ‘other donations’ given as £21,776 (although why the donations are listed as ‘other’ is unclear).
Anyone interested in the figures for Sinn Féin can actually examine them on the party’s website since it is obliged to publish them in the Republic.
While this may feel horrifyingly banal – like the current NI Water story this is what real politics will be increasingly about. For too long security concerns have been a lazy flag of convenience for many practices and people should take the opportunity of the consulation to have their say in getting rid of this one.
Is it possible that some parties fear that publicity, rather than their security, will scare off their donors?
Topic: Government, Politics
Region: Ireland, Northern Ireland
John
That’s a very valid post and deserves a response, and seeing that no one else responded I just thought that I would express my view that it was a very debateable post even if others didn’t consider it so
Isn’t Margaret Ritchie going to sort all this out? Reveal the SDLP donors? No, that didn’t happen? She’s full of shit?
Damn.
I would rather that we gave them each a tax pound with every vote and banned the rest, then we would know who is paying to represent who.