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“Restrictions on political expenditure are plainly restrictions on freedom of speech. However, restrictions on electoral expenditure are akin to the rules of debate in a meeting which restrict the length of speeches and provide for rights of reply. This feature of expenditure caps makes them more acceptable than donation bans or caps.”
Read MoreMr Cope say, “The starting point must be that you don’t need to be a believer to teach mathematics. Religious affiliation or views are irrelevant to who is employed in school outside religious education classes, religious ceremonies and key leadership positions. The government is simply allowing religious groups to impose their views on others. This violates the principal of equality for all in worship.”
Read MoreThe expenditure cap for third parties should strike a fair balance between respect for freedom of speech and association, and the importance of preventing third parties exercising disproportionate influence in elections and being used to circumvent expenditure caps. The current proposal is that each third party can spend the same amount as all the mayoral candidate caps combined. This is absurd. This system permits every third party the same influence, in expenditure terms, as all the mayoral candidates combined. It is hard to see how this system would not inevitably lead to the exact outcome the system purports to be trying to avoid – that being the complete drowning out of other election participants’ voices.
Read MoreRestrictions on electoral expenditure are akin to the rules of debate in a meeting which restrict the length of speeches and provide for rights of reply. This feature of expenditure caps makes them more acceptable than donation bans or caps.
Read MoreBoth industrial organisations and corporations are economic actors pursuing their economic interests in the economic market and the political market.The interests of shareholders and the members of industrial organisations are in this regard indistinguishable from one another. There is no legitimate basis for subjecting one set to a series of burdens and controls which do not apply to others. Or to put it in a positive way, there is no reason why one set of individuals, that is members of industrial organisations, should have more rights than shareholders.
Read MoreIt is actions that should be the subject of criminal sanctions not indications of support or involvement in political organisations. All of the conduct which is alleged against the organisations to be proscribed which is said to justify that proscription could be the subject of an ordinary criminal charge.
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