Short Money

Short Money – funding to support opposition parties – was introduced in 1975. It is provided by the House of Commons and recorded in the Electoral Commission donation database as public funding.

Short Money is made available to all opposition parties in the House of Commons that secured either two seats, or one seat and more than 150,000 votes, at the previous general election. Short Money is not available to parties whose Members have not sworn the oath. A separate analogous scheme, Representative Money, was introduced in 2006 for parties whose Members had not taken the oath.

The Short Money scheme has three components:

• Funding to assist an opposition party in carrying out its Parliamentary business
• Funding for the opposition parties’ travel and associated expenses
• Funding for the running costs of the Leader of the Opposition’s office

The scheme is administered under a resolution of the House of 26 May 1999, as amended by a resolution of 23 March 2016, and consolidated and updated (PDF) by the Members Estimate Committee. 

The amounts available to the parties from the each of the three components in the financial year commencing 1 April 2024 are set out below:

• General funding for Opposition Parties – the amount payable to qualifying parties is £22,295.86 for every seat won at the last General Election plus £44.53 for every 200 votes gained by the party.
• Travel Expenses for Opposition Parties – the total amount payable for travel is £244,931.93. This is divided between each Opposition party in the same proportion as the amounts given under the general funding scheme set out above.
• Leader of the Opposition’s Office – £1,038,770.04 is available for the running costs of the Leader of the Opposition’s office.

Each component is uprated annually on 1 April by the percentage increase in the consumer price index in the year to the previous December. Allocations throughout a Parliament are based on the results of the previous general election. In a general election year, amounts payable are revised, in the light of the results of the general election. As a general election took place in the 2024/25 financial year, revised amounts were calculated on the basis of those results and the allocations based on the 2019 and 2024 are pro-rated for the periods up to and after the general election, respectively.

The funding available to parties with five or fewer Members is subject to a floor and ceiling, set at 50% and 150%, respectively, of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority’s (IPSA) staffing budget for non-London area MPs. For 2024/25, the staffing budget for non-London MPs is £250,820:

• The floor is set at £125,410
• The ceiling is set at £376,230

In the 2019 Parliament, three parties had five or fewer MPs.

In 2024/25, before the general election, the Green Party, with one MP, (at the 2019 general election), qualified for funding between the floor and ceiling. Plaid Cymru, with four MPs, and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), with two MPs, were entitled to the minimum level of funding because the formula would have given them an amount below the floor.

In the 2024 Parliament, eight parties had five or fewer MPs elected at the July 2024 general election. The Alliance Party, Traditional Unionist Voice and the Ulster Unionist Party, with one MP each did not qualify for Short Money, as they received fewer than 150,000 votes.

Two of the five parties which qualified for Short Money were affected by the ceiling (Green Party and Reform), and two of the five parties were entitled to allocation between the floor and ceiling (Democratic Unionist Party and Plaid Cymru). The Social Democratic and Labour Party was entitled to an amount below the floor, so its allocation was lifted to the floor level.

The table below reports the pro-rated claim limits for all parties that qualified for Short Money in 2024/25, whether before the election, after the election or before and after the election

Short Money claim limits, 2024/25 (£)
(94 days @ 2019 rates and 271 days at 2024 rates)

LOTO – Leader of the Opposition
DUP – Democractic Unionist Party
Lib Dems – Liberal Democrats
SDLP – Social Democratic and Labour Party
SNP – Scottish National Party

Parties claiming Short Money must provide the Accounting Officer of the House of Commons (the Clerk of the House) with an auditor’s certificate confirming that all expenses claimed were incurred exclusively in relation to the party’s Parliamentary business. In addition, parties have to provide information on staff employed and other costs funded through Short Money.

The required reports from qualifying parties from the 2016/17 financial year onwards can be found on the Financial Assistance to Opposition Parties section of the House of Commons’ Freedom of Information webpages.