Party financing

SIR - Mr Stokes (Herts Advertiser letters, December 10) should take a good look at the Electoral Commission website where all donations to local parties are logged.

On there he will see that none of Lord Ashcroft's money has been used to fund the St Albans Conservative Party.

But what he may be surprised to learn is that the Trade Unions have paid �750 to the local Labour Party in the last year, and St Albans Lib Dems accepted a staggering �2,000 donation from a private equity and hedge fund company based in Harrogate, Yorkshire.

Why the Trade Unions should want to fund the Labour Party is pretty obvious. But what asset strippers and financial speculators, based hundreds of miles away in leafy Harrogate, hope to ever gain; have remotely in connection with; or even more worryingly may have been promised in return for their 'grubby' money from St Albans Lib Dems or their "parliamentary hopeful" Mr Walkington raises some deeply troubling questions.

NAME & ADDRESS SUPPLIED

SIR - Mr St John Stokes' letter in last week's Herts Advertiser raises an interesting point about back door state funding of political parties.

The national press has reported that Liberal Democrat Councillors are required as a condition of their selection to hand over to their party about �1,000 of their council-tax funded allowances. Presumably this pays for party propaganda and campaigning

Interestingly enough, Liberal Democrat controlled councils in Hertfordshire pay their councillors about �1,000 per annum more than the average for the councils run by the other parties.

Thirty-five Liberal Democrat county and district councillors are in the St Albans constituancy (as opposed to eight Conservatives, and five Labour) and are able to bleed out quite a sum!

MATTHEW PECK

Lemsford Road, St Albans