Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240-259)
FRANK HINDLE,
COLLEEN FLETCHER
AND DAVID
SIMPSON
16 MAY 2006
Q240 Dr Whitehead: How significant
though do you think that is in terms of that differentiation?
Frank Hindle: I am from the north
of England and in most of the seats in the north of England it
is not significant but we do not have a lot of marginals. In marginal
seats it is more significant because that is where everybody is
going to deploy their resources.
Q241 Dr Whitehead: Would you say
therefore that it is over-significant in a certain number of seats
and under-significant in others; is that the general observation
that you are making?
David Simpson: I think that is
probably true. Again, if the party nationally has got income it
is going to seek to deploy it where it is going to have the greatest
effect and it is going to have the greatest effect on what it
determines are the key marginal seats for that particular party.
You do then get the greater additional impact both of the local
campaigning on the one hand and the national campaigning on the
other, but it is wholly differential in the sense that quite clearly
if your party is, say, like us in the north east of England to
a large degree, we would not be looking to over-resource in most
of the north east of England simply because we know that we do
not have that degree of marginality on a national basis. You would
be looking to deploy your assets elsewhere.
Dr Whitehead: So the phrase "We
would not be looking to over-resource" is perhaps another
way of saying, "The last thing we dream of is sending any
national money up there"?
Q242 Chairman: Well chosen words.
Frank Hindle: I can comment that
you are very successful in not over-resourcing.
Q243 Dr Whitehead: As far as the
national campaigns are concerned, over the course of an election
period, in terms of the party's work and so from your deployment
of funding and activities locally, how do you find those national
campaigns relate to local issues? Does the dog wag the tail or
does the tail wag the dog in as much as do you find yourselves
trying to go into step in terms of the election campaign with
what is happening nationally or do you hope that the national
campaign can chime in with what you are doing and saying and funding
locally?
Colleen Fletcher: I think we make
it do so rather than hope it does so by running local campaigns
alongside the national campaigns, so we tailor it in; we try to.
David Simpson: Locally we seek
to tailor the best part of the national campaign into that which
fits our local community. You are bound to. It is a mix and match
exercise.
Frank Hindle: You asked specifically
about the election period, which, if it is not a general election,
is a very short period, and it is very easy to get hit by some
national bandwagon that nobody saw coming and so the leaflet you
had prepared on topic X locally actually looks very uninteresting
because all of a sudden is not what people are wanting to know
about nationally.
Q244 Julie Morgan: Could you tell
me if you feel it has become more difficult to raise money locally?
Colleen Fletcher: It has always
been difficult to raise money locally. I would not say it is more
difficult than it ever was, certainly not.
David Simpson: That is probably
right overall. There are peaks and troughs, obviously, of party
popularity which have an enormous effect, clearly. If people locally
are out of sympathy with your party at the top it does permeate
down and it does hit your local fundraising; there is no doubt
about that. Equally, when that turns and the curve starts going
up the funding starts to increase again. There are always going
to be peaks and troughs, but if you look at it across the piece
over a period of years I guess it is not that much more difficult.
Q245 Julie Morgan: So you do not
think it is more difficult now than it ever has been?
Frank Hindle: The comment that
it has always been difficult is the point.
Q246 Chairman: Am I wrong in assuming
that there is no longer such a ready supply of people whose party
activity consists of fundraising at the local level, organising
jumble sales, coffee mornings and all the rest of it, as opposed
to those who join the party because they want to do politics,
stand for the council or that sort of thing? Is there a social
change there or am I making this up?
Colleen Fletcher: There is a change.
You can call it a social change if you like, but many years ago
I do not recall but people have told me that women did the fundraising
in political parties and so it was an ongoing thing. When they
realised that, hey, hang on, the big change came around, that
changed so that fundraising was probably not on the minds of one
part all the time. It happened when it happened. I think fundraising
went on behind the scenes all the time in a small way, not raising
huge amounts of money but just enough to keep you ticking along,
which has not changed, but I think now it is more mixed, so everyone
joins in. It is a joint effort really.
Q247 Julie Morgan: When new members
join do they realise that part of their activities is fundraising?
Colleen Fletcher: I think so,
yes. I think it comes with the job, as it were. I think they do
realise that and lots of new members are made through fundraising
activities.
David Simpson: If they do not
realise that on day one they certainly do on day two.
Frank Hindle: Our members get
an inordinate number of begging letters from the central party.
We warn members about it when they join.
Q248 Julie Morgan: What percentage
of time is spent on fundraising? You said, Colleen Fletcher, that
it is mixed in with everything else.
Colleen Fletcher: It is.
Q249 Julie Morgan: Could you say
how much time members have to spend on fundraising?
Colleen Fletcher: If we organise
a fundraising dinner or something like that they spend a lot of
time up to that dinner organising it and everything that goes
with it and then we will leave off it until the next fundraising
event. That is how it is.
David Simpson: That is exactly
right.
Colleen Fletcher: It is difficult
to say how much time is spent doing it.
David Simpson: My own party is
organised on a branch basis and then it goes up in a sort of pyramid
to the local associations, key activists, and the branches are
encouraged to raise funds and to organise activities which will
raise those funds. Equally, when it is election time they are
there to provide the bread and butter of the organisation that
we need to get the literature out and to do the work at that time,
so it is a mix and match. Some people obviously will say, "I
would rather do the politics bit than the fundraising". Others
will say, "Don't ask me to go and knock at doors, for goodness'
sake, ever, but let me organise a jumble sale or a party and I
will go and do it willingly".
Q250 Julie Morgan: Would you agree
that those sorts of activities are very valuable?
David Simpson: Absolutely.
Q251 Julie Morgan: I mean apart from
the money they raise, in terms of the politics as well.
Frank Hindle: Within the organisation,
yes.
David Simpson: The key to it is
that it involves people. Politics is about people at the end of
the day; you cannot get away from it. It is the key that makes
this whole operation work. If you do not get people in to take
over from other people the whole thing dies on the vine. That
is not what any of us are about. We are about continuity and trying
to raise the profile of our individual parties.
Q252 Chairman: What would be the
effect on your campaigning if the parties spent less money centrally?
What difference would you notice and what difference would it
make to the work you do in Wimbledon or Gateshead or Coventry?
Would you have to generate more activity to fill the gap or would
you think, "All right. That kind of warfare is not happening
in any direction. We will just carry on"?
David Simpson: We have a legal
maximum locally that we cannot exceed in any election campaign
in terms of what we are doing. The fact that the party at the
top is spending an awful lot of money on a national advertising
campaign or leaflets or whatever it is does not necessarily have
that great an effect on the fact that we have a legal maximum
beyond which we cannot go and we would be looking to spend that
and to create our own literature and our own environment to support
our own candidate locally.
Frank Hindle: But that legal maximum
only applies in very limited regular periods. If the national
expenditure was reduced and the party was left with the same resources,
it probably would not affect us particularly because we never
get near the cap, but I would be concerned therefore if the other
parties—to my right here—had resources which they
would want to find some way of using usefully to the best effect,
which would mean that they would boost their local spending. If
we bring down the national cap and do not control local expenditure
correspondingly then the gains which are being sought would not
be achieved because it would be very easy for some national treasurer
to tell local parties, "We have got a million pounds. You
have each got a £5,000 donation and this is how I have spent
it. Here is the receipt and here is the invoice."
Q253 Chairman: "And here is
the template for what you have got to do" as well?
Frank Hindle: Yes.
Q254 Mr Tyrie: I think we are very
close to the heart of the matter because public confidence has
been so dented by the way parties are raising money nationally
that we are hoping we can think of some way of affording party
finance and state support for it that can help revive that confidence.
That would principally be by finding ways of encouraging local
activity and local funding to increase, but if you are suggesting,
Frank Hindle, that one party has a much bigger advantage in its
capacity to do that than any other we will have an impasse. Therefore
my first question to you particularly is, and you have not got
to elaborate on it in detail now, do you think in principle, if
we can find a scheme that can revive and stimulate local party
funding we will be doing something that will be healthy for the
political system?
Frank Hindle: Yes, certainly.
Some of the ideas which have been canvassed, such as, for example,
tax relief on small donations, would first of all make small donations
more valuable to us and, secondly, to some extent it would make
it more respectable to go and donate and also encourage people.
It is like charity. It is always a good incentive to say, "If
you put some money in the taxman will put some in as well".
Do not take my other comments as being purely negative. I think
there are things you can do to encourage things.
Q255 Mr Tyrie: It seems to me that
therein lies the heart of the matter for all of us. We all want
healthy local parties. We all used to have healthier local parties
than we have now. If state funding is to be introduced or extended
should it be done in a way that can increase or offer an opportunity
to increase local party activity?
Colleen Fletcher: Yes, I think
so. You are talking about tax relief on small donations. I am
treasurer of my own constituency and have been for the last eight
years. The regulations that came in on donation reporting did
not particularly hit me very heard because I do not find it particularly
difficult to do. What I do find difficult is to remember to do
it, because mainly I am returning those donations with "nil,
nil" written on them, and I think, "Oh, it is nothing
again". I get heavy reminders from my regional party about
this so they do actually go in. Although I can cope with filling
the form in because it is pretty easy, in constituencies up and
down the country most people who hold office in any political
party are not professional. I am the treasurer; I am not a professional
accountant, and our secretaries do not sit at word processors
all day, or whatever they are called now. They literally do it
on a voluntary basis so I think it would be important to have
something that did not complicate things for treasurers of political
parties.
Q256 Mr Tyrie: From memory, David,
I think you have spent most of your career in the sticks, or a
great deal of it, doing exactly this.
David Simpson: Yes, I have indeed.
My background is one of being firstly for a goodly number of years
a local party agent and then a regional agent of the Conservative
Party and I have been at the sharp end of that fundraising, and
indeed now do it locally as a volunteer in my own constituency.
I am absolutely convinced that we have to find a way of improving
the way in which political parties are looked upon and the only
way that perhaps we are going to do that is by having some mix
and match process. It would be enormously helpful, just as all
our charitable works can, if we could get tax relief on those.
We should be able to get tax relief on small donations to political
parties. I would not necessarily want to put a particular figure
on it but I think that would help and I think a lot more people
would then involve themselves. They would not necessarily become
activists but at least they would feel they were putting something
into the pot.
Q257 James Brokenshire: I want to
come back to the compliance issue of the form filling and the
duties and responsibilities that someone may have as an officer
of a local association seeking to meet the rules and requirements.
Colleen Fletcher, you were saying that in your situation you are
lucky that it is not such an onerous obligation but, talking to
colleagues of all parties around the country, do you receive complaints
that the existing rules on how to register donations and comply
with the accounting provisions of the local accounting units are
not working, or are people complaining that they are difficult
to follow, difficult to understand and people feel a bit anxious
about it?
Colleen Fletcher: I have not heard
personally of people who are particularly anxious about that,
so I could not possibly comment. I can only say that I imagine
that some people would find it an onerous thing to do.
David Simpson: If I can help here,
putting my other hat on, I am still working for the Conservative
Party as its head of compliance at campaign headquarters and in
that I deal with, on behalf of the registered treasurer, making
sure that we make our donation returns in accordance with the
Act, and it is quite difficult. You have to remember that there
is a turnover of voluntary officers. Most Conservative associations,
and I am sure Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party too, have
a sort of three-year rule where officers change, and so there
is a training process if they have got to be involved and people
move on and so on. That puts an additional burden on parties and
their organisations, and yes, these people are volunteers and
the registered treasurer of a local party can face criminal sanctions
according to PPERA. I believe that to be wholly wrong in the sense
that if there was a civil penalty then the penalties might be
enforced. I do not think the Electoral Commission even wants to
go down that route of criminal sanctions against people. It is
quite an onerous thing to take on, to say to somebody, "Okay,
you be the registered treasurer but, by the way, here is what
can happen to you if you do not fill the form in correctly".
Colleen Fletcher: And most of
us have not told them.
David Simpson: You may not tell
them.
Chairman: Most of us have probably had
to try and find those people as treasurers at some point and gone
through exactly that process.
Q258 James Brokenshire: The Chairman
raises an interesting point on that. I know, Colleen Fletcher,
you were saying that you had been your treasurer for eight years.
Not that I would ever wish you any ill at all, but if you were
to go under the proverbial bus how easy do you think it would
be to find a replacement against this context, because clearly
things have changed from when you came into post to where things
are now.
Colleen Fletcher: I hope it would
not be too difficult. It is rather difficult to answer, but then
I am coming from my point of view who maybe was a treasurer first
and then met with it. We had a lot of information about it and
certainly my own party gave training on this, how to get it right
and how to do it, so hopefully we would do the same with someone
new coming in. It is not the job of doing it and making sure all
the rules are correct and the reporting is right that is the problem.
It is getting someone to spend their time doing it that is usually
the problem.
Frank Hindle: A treasurer is always
a difficult post to fill anyway, and you always want somebody
who can do the figures. Yes, there was some resistance at first
because people did not understand it, but training has been put
in place and as treasurers or federations change we need to keep
the training up to date, but we can also explain to people the
good reasons for it, and also in most cases it is a nil return
so it is not really that hard to do. People have to be reminded
or persuaded sometimes but I would not put it as a major issue.
Q259 James Brokenshire: I want to
move on to a slightly different point based on your feeling of
local members and of the people in your constituencies or your
areas in the context of state funding, which obviously has been
in many ways the focus of the debate over changes to the way in
which parties are funded. Do you think, based on your experience,
that an increase in state funding would increase or decrease disengagement
with democracy, the democratic process, party politics? In other
words would it help or hinder, do you think?
Colleen Fletcher: It is very difficult
to say whether it would or not. Maybe if people thought there
was more state funding going into political parties they would
feel as though they wanted a stake in that, so maybe it would
increase but it is hard to say.
David Simpson: An awful lot of
people frankly do not realise just how much state funding of the
national political scene there is.
Colleen Fletcher: As happens now,
yes.
David Simpson: As happens now.
If they did I think they might be slightly less inclined to give
locally, to be perfectly frank.
| 
