Increasing the amount of money that political parties can spend during election campaigns might not sound sensible. Professor Justin Fisher explains that the government’s proposal to do so seems reasonable in principle, but must be implemented with care to avoid disproportionately benefiting the two most popular parties.
Professor Fisher emphasises that the best approach in this context would be to raise party spending limits as proposed by the Secretary of State, but in a phased manner over a number of years. As he claims: "This would help mitigate the issues described above, which have the potential to distort electoral competition, while ultimately achieving the entirely appropriate adjustment of spending limits for the value of money. Correcting the failure over 23 years to adjust limits for inflation is a good idea – doing it in one go presents significant potential problems."