BNP faces fine for late accounts

Sonia Gable | Wednesday, 25 July 2007 Source: Searchlight

The Electoral Commission has today published accounts of the main political parties for the year ending on 31 December 2006.

Political parties and their accounting units are required by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (PPERA) to submit their accounts each year to the Commission. Those with gross annual income or total expenditure of over £250,000 are given six months from the year end to prepare their accounts and have them independently audited before submitting them. The accounts were due by 7 July 2007.

In May, the Commission published the financial accounts of those political parties and accounting units whose gross income and total expenditure were each less than £250,000. Accounting units with income and expenditure that are both under £25,000 are not required to submit their accounts.

The Commission is currently scrutinising all the submitted accounts, by cross checking them against other information held and where discrepancies occur, raising them with the parties.

The Electoral Commission has not yet received any accounts from the BNP, which in past years has had annual income of over £600,000. The party faces a fine, which will depend on the length of time between the missed deadline and the submission of outstanding information. Another party that missed the deadline by six days was fined £500.

Peter Wardle, Chief Executive of the Electoral Commission said: "The accounts should be a key source of information for anyone wishing to find out more about how a political party is funded, and what it spends its money on. Without complete and open accounts, you cannot have full transparency about party finances.