The [Liberal Democrats] party said it had raised more than Labour from individual and corporate donors in five out of the past six quarters. In the second quarter of this year the party attracted £850,000 against £300,000 for Labour, which is now majority financed by money from the big unions.

As far as I’m aware, this is the first time the Liberal Democrats have been raising more money from non-trade union sources than the Labour Party, which is a major change from the previous well-established and large Labour lead in such funding.

The issue came to light after it was revealed that over £1m in donations taken by the Conservative Party and booked as being from RF Trustee Co Ltd were not in fact donations from the company but from a series of individuals.

As a result, the Conservative Party re-examined the donations and discovered it had accepted £1,500 in 2004 from an unidentifiable source and £100,000 in 2006 from Mrs Joanna Kate King, who was not on the electoral register at the time.

Although on a strict narrow literal reading of the legislation wording all impermissible donations have to be forfeit, by a 4-3 ruling the Supreme Court decided that the word “forfeit” is  used in an unusual way in the wording of the legislation and that the wider context shows that the total of impermissible donations is the maximum that needs to be paid back. As a result, instead of ordering the paying back of the full sum, the court instead only ordered that the donations received after a warning meeting with the Electoral Commission need repaying.

As Stephen has often noted on this site when reporting on the quarterly donation figures, the Liberal Democrat figures show a consistently higher level of income in this Parliament than in previous ones. The net assets figures also show how the Liberal Democrats have been consistently in the black, unlike either of the other two main parties.

Note: the graphs have different scales

“Most people” are in favour of ending the confidentiality surrounding donations to political parties in NI, focus group research has suggested.

It was conducted by the Electoral Commission, which recorded the views of eight groups around NI, each consisting of between six and eight people.

Unlike the rest of the UK, details of political donors are still kept secret in NI, because of security concerns…

This confidentiality clause is due to expire on 31 October 2010.

The Northern Ireland Office is expected to consult the public on whether the clause should end or be extended further before the end of this year.

The original decision to exempt Northern Ireland from some of the controls around political donations (allowing both foreign and secret ones) struck me as being one of those unfortunate messy compromises that life sometimes requires. In principle, exempting Northern Ireland was wrong, but in practice given the delicacy of bringing peace to Northern Ireland it was an understandable step to take.

Donation reporting started in Northern Ireland in 2007 and now it’s good to see though Northern Ireland politics headed towards taking another step toward normality.