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Election spending and freedom of expression

WITH the imminent incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights and the recent publication of the Report of the Neill Committee on Standards in Public Life (Cm 4057), these are exciting, if fluid, times for those with an interest in party political funding. In tandem these initiatives will begin the long overdue process of reform to the law and practice of elections in the UK. A key difficulty awaiting the new regime is one long familiar to many other Western democracies, namely how to regulate election spending whilst preserving the integrity of an entrenched right to freedom of expression, a question recently considered by the European Court of Human Rights in Bowman v. UK (141/1996/762/959).