Question to Mid Sussex’s MP
Before going any further, it is important for me to state that, although I am writing here as a private citizen, I am a Liberal Democrat county councillor. So, I’m open to the jibe ‘he would say that wouldn’t he’. I’m comfortable with that type of reasonable criticism.
There are seven Principles of Public Life (also known as the Nolan Principles) that apply to those elected to public office. The second principle is integrity, which talks about those serving the public avoiding obligation to organisations that might try to influence them: “They must declare and resolve any interests and relationships.”
Over seven months ago I directly wrote our MP for Mid Sussex with the following request: “It has been reported that well over a quarter of Conservative Party donations now come from property developers.
For example, in the Sunday Times, yesterday, it was claimed that one developer, Thakeham, ‘has donated more than £600,000 since 2017, including £156,000 before the last election’. So how much of your 2019 election costs, in terms of value and percentage, were funded by property developers?” is truly disappointing that I am still awaiting a response to this enquiry.
Is it unreasonable to ask our local Conservative politicians (our Conservative councillors as well as our MP) how many election leaflets and how much of their other election materials were paid for by donations from property developers? RICHARD CHERRY Junction Road, Burgess Hill In response, Mims Davies MP said: I would like to make it clear that those donations which meet the £1,500 reportable level are publicly available via the Parliamentary Register of Members Interests (RMI) for MPs and for political organisations via the Electoral Commission (EC), plus those made to an association towards an MP’s election expenses, as well as other costs funded for the MP by their association, are reported to both registers. Only one such reportable donation was received in respect of my GE19 expenses and this was from an individual. Details were published on the RMI on 11/01/20 and by the EC on the 04/06/20. None of the other donations, all of which were below the publicly reportable level, were received from developers. I can only apologise that councillor Cherry, writing in his private capacity, did not receive a formal response to his enquiry and I have ensured that one has been issued. We have a very large amount of correspondence and given this public information is available, I am sure that a follow-up email would have been sufficient to assist him further. Meanwhile, it may be prescient at this point in relation to development, and what I believe councillor Cherry is inferring in relation to housing, to note and share that the Liberal Democrats have publicly committed to a house building target of 380,000 homes – a number 80,000 larger than the Conservatives.