Short Money
In government, politicians can use the civil service to do research and promote their policies. This gives the Government a massive advantage over Opposition parties in terms of resources, making it harder for the Opposition to scrutinise and develop policies.
To balance out this disparity, Harold Wilson introduced an annual payment, called Short Money, to opposition parties to allow them to carry out their parliamentary duties. It is available to any party that secured either two or more seats or one seat and over 150,000 votes at the previous general election, provided its MPs take their seats. (Since Sinn Féin don't take their seats, they don't have "parliamentary duties". Since 2006 they get their own top-up money under a separate funding scheme.)
Funding Levels[edit | edit source]
Parties get £16,689.13 per seat plus £33.33 for every 200 votes. The Leader of the Official Opposition also gets £777,538.48 to run their office.
While the money makes a relatively small contribution to Tory and Labour coffers, it's a big deal for the smaller parties. The Lib Dems found the sudden withdrawal of it crushing during the 2010-2015 Coalition, as they were forced to fire many of their researchers. Douglas Carswell's refusal to take the full sum got him into a big fight with the rest of Ukip.
Name[edit | edit source]
Despite the intuitive name, Short Money is not actually called "Short Money" because the Opposition are short on cash. It's named after Edward Short, the MP who proposed it.
