THE key proposal in the Phillips report on party funding is outrageous. Why should taxpayers finance idiot billboards, mendacious spin-doctors, flash helicopters and spousal hairdos? If party members want to see their own money go there then that is their business. If political parties cannot raise enough from individual members, with a cap on donations to avoid corruption, then they should go out of business. Guff about "parliamentary democracy cannot function properly without robust and healthy political parties" is camouflage for them to raid and loot the public purse.

Your leader (Funding democracy, March 16) does not quite hit the nail on the head. Sir Hayden Phillips was, indeed, "asked to review their funding by Tony Blair against incendiary revelations . . . of the cash-for-honours allegations still dogging Labour". But the reason he was asked is sufficient for his findings to be rejected. This was a classic Blairesque ploy to divert our attention from an unfolding scandal. And to make us view it as a mere party-funding issue instead of the monstrous constitutional infamy it will prove if the allegations are upheld.

The rotten Phillips proposals, if implemented, will fossilise and institutionalise the present party system - which is why all party leaders favour them. In the years 1916-22 the old Liberal Party was so dominant that it could afford to provide both the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition. A generation later, with a little help from our electoral system, its entire parliamentary membership could ride around in a taxi. Had Phillips been in operation, however, we might well have seen the return of Lloyd George in the 1930s and premierships of Archie Sinclair and Clement Davis. Yes, quite. The most crushing argument against Phillips is that wonderful and richly deserved prospect: a parliamentary attendant, a few years from now, entering the Westminster lobby and crying "Taxi for the Labour Party".

Thomas McLaughlin, 4 Munro Road, Glasgow.

THE argument that state funding of political parties is necessary for a healthy democracy is based on a false premise: "That parliamentary democracy cannot function properly without robust and healthy political parties."

Parties are spending ever more to elicit votes from people who are not impressed by any of them. Most people are not prepared to contribute to ludicrous campaign expenses only to be rewarded by the sight of "loyal backbenchers" following their leaders through the divisions regardless of the merits of the case put before them.

The electorate are being attracted to single-issue campaigns in ever-greater numbers as disillusionment grows with our elected "representatives". If political parties cannot attract enough supporters to fund their ambitions, then it is better that they wither and make room for political movements that do command wide support.

Instead of stealing our taxes to fund their own parties, MPs should consider ways to make parliament a real debating chamber, able to make decisions instead of acting as a rubber stamp for an executive that wields power through patronage.

Geraint Bevan, 3e Grovepark Gardens, Glasgow.

RESPONDING to the Phillips report on the funding of political parties, Conservative Party chairman Francis Maude referred to an unfair advantage enjoyed by sitting MPs "who now have tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money in parliamentary allowances to spend in their constituencies". This is a clear admission that public funds provided to MPs so they can carry out their duties as our elected representatives are being diverted for party political purposes.

Rather than trying to use this misconduct to justify "more" state funding of parties, Mr Maude should be calling for those MPs who have been stealing from the taxpayers to be investigated and punished.

Dr D R Cooper, 14 Belmont Park Avenue, Maidenhead, Berkshire.