Short Money
Debate between John Penrose and Suella Braverman(8 years, 2 months ago)
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John Penrose
The House will be aware that the independent Electoral Commission has undertaken a fairly careful consultation over some time and has made some recommendations. The statutory instrument I mentioned in my initial remarks implements some of those, but not all as yet. We are holding off on deciding how we proceed with the remainder of the recommendations until we have the results of the expression of views. Given the obvious parallels between Short money and policy development grant, we thought it was sensible to make sure we had one set of answers before we proceeded with the other recommendations.
Suella Fernandes (Fareham) (Con)
The cost of Short money has increased by 68% cumulatively since 2010. Is that really justifiable at a time when councils of all colours are making very large efficiency savings? Surely, taxpayer-funded political parties can do the same.
John Penrose
I could not agree more. People outside this place—outside the Westminster bubble—who are looking at our discussions today will not understand why politicians feel that they should treat themselves separately and as a special case. Those people will look at what has happened to their budgets over the last five or six years and say, “What is sauce for the goose should be sauce for the political gander as well.”