How serious is Miliband?

The Tories reckon that Ed Miliband’s proposed donation cap of £5,000 is a con that will hit their funding every year, while preserving Labour’s funds except at election time thanks to the union levy being exempt. Housing minister and regular attack-dog Grant Shapps laid out the party’s position on Andrew Neil’s BBC Sunday Politics show earlier today. Here is the transcript of their exchange:

Shapps: Well I watched the interview and I thought this sounds big and important, so to a quick look afterwards and discovered that of the £10m Labour got from the unions last year, they still get 9.9 million of it, so this is a complete wheeze, one of the most disingenuous interviews I think I’ve seen all year.”

Andrew Neil: Really? Well let’s just have a look at the funding figures for 2010.  There they are up on the screen here.  Here’s Labour Party funding in an election year which makes it interesting. There’s the affiliation figures. That’s largest money, the eight million coming from the levy that trade union members pay to affiliate to the Labour Party. But you’ve got 13 million in donations of which we understand four million has come from the unions. So it’s not peanuts at all, it’s a huge sum of money.

Shapps: I guess that’s okay if you just forget about the other four years during the parliament.

Andrew Neil: well the election year’s the important one.

Shapps: What you don’t think £10 million last year for example was important and 10 million next year and the year after and the year after.

Andrew Neil: Minister, you cannot say it’s peanuts, when Labour got 13 million in an election year, four million from the unions which Mr Miliband’s prepared to forego. Most of the other of that 30 million came from donations over £5,000, it’s a huge hit he’s proposing to his own party’s finances.

Shapps:  In only one year of five years. And this is the point. The interview he gave this morning gave the impression – I watched it, look this is something interesting and new. We’ve been trying for years to get this cap on large donations, very, very happy to do that. In fact we’ve been leading the way with it. The problem is every time you get close to it they say, yeah, but it can’t include the union donations which actually outside of this election year data you’ve just given us, as I say in every other years and there are five years in a parliament, so in the other four years it’s okay for him to keep 9.9 million of the 10 million that the unions are giving him.

UPDATE: The Lib Dems are thought to be in favour of a small cap: their deputy leader Simon Hughes has said that £5,000 to £10,000 is in the ‘right ballpark’. But, like the Tories, the party wants the union levy (the affiliation donation) to be reformed by members opting into it. The levy is going to be the sticking point in discussions in the weeks running up to the local elections.