Editorial: Sneaking past the watchdog

Opinion

The Labour Party, having grudgingly agreed to reimburse the public accounts for its unlawful election spending, now has put a bill before Parliament to legalise the expenses. It cites the advice of the Treasury that a validation bill is the proper thing to do, but the public must wonder. By what principle of legislative lore can it be necessary for wrongful use of a financial allocation to be made right by a retrospective act?

The Treasury's advice, made public yesterday, gives no explanation. Its Cabinet paper simply points out that expenses incurred without or outside a parliamentary appropriation are a breach of the Public Finance Act, and that even if the money is repaid "the unlawfulness remains. Therefore we recommend these expenses be validated".

It continues: "As a matter of course, unappropriated expenditure occurs every year in a number of votes. The validation of such expenditure is a usual part of the overall budget legislative cycle ... " But this is not a routine instance of a department incurring costs that could not reasonably have been foreseen at the beginning of the budgetary year. This was a case of spending that Parliament's independent adjudicator has found to be outside the bounds of its intended purpose.

The validation bill, no matter how much Labour and its supporting parties present it as a procedural formality, will over-rule the Auditor-General's verdict. The bill crucially defines the term "electioneering" in the narrow sense Kevin Brady rejected: material that expressly seeks support for the election of a particular person or party, encourages anyone to join a party or asks for money.

Anything else will be permitted, at least until the end of next year. Should the Government collapse and a snap election occur next year, Labour would be entitled to issue another pledge card financed from public funds.

Before the bill's expiry, Parliament is likely to have completed a review of election law that the Government plainly hopes will permit public funding of the sort of material it issued in the election campaign last year, if not the complete public funding of party campaigns. The legislation introduced yesterday looks like a device to circumvent the public watchdog by stealth.

Labour and one or two smaller parties continue to insist that the definition of electioneering accepted by the Auditor-General - broadly, anything designed to win public support at an election - would exclude practically everything politicians do in the course of the parliamentary work. But that is mere sophistry. Mr Brady confined his concerns to activities and publications within three months of the last election, which would be an easy line to draw.

The difference between public information and political promotion is plainly obvious to most people, and it is confused only in minds that want to make the distinction difficult. Public opinion sanctions annual allocations of taxpayers' money to ministers and parties for the communication of policies and other information of public interest. The money was never intended to finance a party's election manifesto in any form, or to advertise election rallies by another name.

The best solution would be to stipulate that the money could not be used for any purpose after the dissolution of Parliament, usually about six weeks before an election. That might not prevent parties using the money for some early electioneering material but anything published too early would risk being forgotten once campaigning began in earnest.

The Government is simply digging a deeper hole for itself with this stubborn refusal to accept the Auditor-General's judgment and let it stand.