Leading Article: Shed some light on party funds

FEW THINGS do more harm to Britain's political system than the seedy ways in which its two great parties are funded. So it was depressing to see that an official report from the Tory majority on the Commons home affairs committee published yesterday proposed no more than cosmetic changes to the way political parties' accounts are audited and published.

The accompanying minority report from the committee's Labour members was more honest, demanding sweeping changes in the rules on corporate donations. But even they, perhaps conscious that the biggest union gift to their party is eight times as large as the biggest business gift to the Tories, held back from suggesting a ceiling on single donations.

Beneath the rhetoric, the need for two reforms shines forth. The first is disclosure. Company shareholders, trade union members and foreign companies ought all to be welcome to give money to whichever party they wish. But they should not be allowed to do so in secret. Corporate donations should be voted on at annual general meetings, just as union political funds are balloted; and the parties that receive the money should be required to itemise domestic gifts above pounds 5,000, and all foreign gifts. The plea that producing this list will be an administrative burden to the parties should not be taken seriously. The accounts are already in existence; disclosure requires nothing more than printing a few thousand copies of a booklet no larger than the sort of pamphlets that Labour and the Tories already publish regularly.

If donations are open to scrutiny, it becomes harder and more embarrassing for political parties to temper their policies to suit the interests of their backers. On its own, therefore, introducing light into this previously murky area will do much to discourage abuse.

But Britain's party funding cannot be reformed on the supply side alone. If the big parties did not need to spend so much money, they would not need to stoop to such indignities to raise it. One of their biggest, but politically least reputable, forms of spending is advertising in newspapers and on billboards - a notable example of which was the Conservative election poster warning of Labour's 'tax bombshell'.

Politicians who oppose a ban on political advertising during elections claim that they need a direct route to the voters, unmediated by television or radio interviewers. Yet they already have just such a route in the party political broadcasts, which allow them to develop their arguments at length without charge and without fear of objections from the Advertising Standards Authority.

It is true that an advertising ban would force the parties to take their messages back to the constituencies. A ban might result in more public meetings and door-to-door canvassing. But that would be no bad thing. British politicians are already too remote from the people. What they need is not more glitz and hype, but less.