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Communications Allowance

The right hon. Gentleman says that the communications allowance could not be seen as being in the financial interests of Members. It may be some time since he was a candidate opposing a sitting Member of Parliament, but when he did so, that sitting MP did not have, in addition to all his staff funding, £10,000 a year to spend on self-congratulatory literature. By the sound of it, if he had his way, such literature would be going through people's letterboxes all the way to election day, thus distorting our democracy, supporting incumbents and not freeing up and allowing a fair playing field. That is why I turned up here today. The communications allowance is fundamentally corrupt and it cannot be got rid of too soon.