Every few years there is a row about how Party funds are spent. When will we learn? The Treasurer of the Party should be elected by and accountable to the members of the Party at an Annual General Meeting of the Party to which every member is invited. At the AGM the Treasurer should present the Accounts of the Party for Adoption by the members.
This is the way nearly all normal organisations work. It is time the Conservative Party did the same. The following article is published. today. It quotes what I said ten years ago. It was right then. It is right now.
Published: by
conservativehome.com April 27, 2021
Conservative Party Board members “raising questions
about Party funds and the Prime Minister.”
By Paul Goodman
For the record, ConservativeHome takes a relaxed view of Party funds
being paid to the Party leader – to cover, say, entertaining Tory MPs for party
purposes; or travel costs; or, perhaps, legal fees.
Until Simon Case’s inquiry reports, and perhaps not even then, it won’t
be clear who originally put up the money for the contested Downing Street flat
wallpaper.
Reports suggest that Party funds weren’t used for this purpose
straighforwardly, because Lord Brownlow was due to make a donation in
October last year of £58,000 to cover part of the costs of the project.
This site leaves aside for the moment questions about whether and when
any such gift will be declared, and who would be due to pay how much tax on it.
We want to focus instead on part of the purpose for which
ConservativeHome was originally created: providing a forum for the views of
Party members, and campaigning for their rights – present and future.
A donation that goes into Party funds and is then passed on to the
Leader is, well, one that comes from those funds, even if the money concerned
has been raised for a special purpose.
It may be that Lord Brownlow’s gift was passed onto Johnson and then
duly returned to the Party, and perhaps to him; it may also be that it was
never sent on to him at all.
This site is told that the Conservative Party Board isn’t due to meet
until late May, but that Board members “are asking questions about what
happened”.
It has also been reported that the Party helped the Prime Minister with
legal bills when he was contesting claims that, when Mayor of London, he used
his position to “benefit and reward” Jennifer Arcuri, who has claimed they had
an affair.
One member of the Board told this site that “I know nothing about that
at all”. What would be right course for the Board to take in such
circumstances?
Party members will be well aware that their control over its spending is
so limited as scarcely to exist. To some extent, it rests with the
Treasurer of the Party, currently Sir Ehud Sheleg.
The Party’s website tells readers that each Association has a Deputy
Chairman for Membership and Finance, but says nothing about the Party’s own
Finance Committee, which makes reports to the Board.
Finance Committee members say that they have no recollection of payments
to cover costs associated with the Prime Minister’s legal bills being discussed
at any time.
The Committee does review the Party’s legal costs but, according to one
member, “what tends to get discussed are unbelievably boring cases of why
Person A is suing Person B”.
A senior backbencher said: “while there would be no legal requirement
for the Finance Committee to approve such payments, I think that, were the
Acuri costs covered, it would have been appropriate for the committee to approve
them in advance”.
All in all, it is hard to argue with the proposal floated ten years
ago on this site by John Strafford that “the
Treasurer of the Party should present the Annual Accounts of the Party to the
Annual General Meeting for adoption by the members”.
But as we say, ConservativeHome takes a relaxed view of Party funds
being paid to the Party leader for the purposes we described earlier. We
will see from our forthcoming monthly survey whether or not our Survey Panel
members agree.
