I found out a bit more about why Horsham’s Tory MP gets a column in his local paper but Crawley’s Labour MP doesn’t get a column in her local paper (owned by the same group).

It turns out that there used to be something similar in the Crawley papers, but they dropped it for some reason – but while it was running the paper did insist on her Tory counterpart having a column as well, for the sake of balance.  Whether this was for legal reasons, their own sense of fair play or an inherent aversion to giving Labour any sort of advantage I don’t know.

So the question now is -why is there no apparent need for the West Sussex County Times to offer the Labour and Liberal Democrat candidates for Horsham the same amount of space Francis Maude is given?

The irony is that Maude is one of the Tories who has been complaining about the communications allowance given to MPs (of all parties).  He says that it gives incumbents an unfair advantage in elections because they have a load of letters to constituents paid for, but there are strict rules about what MPs can use that allowance for.  ((Sometimes broken or bent admittedly)) No such rules apply to what Maude can write in the County Times.

It could be argued that a free space every week in a local paper is more effective at reaching the electorate than official communications paid for out of the allowance, which might sounds generous but probably wouldn’t pay for one letter a year to every house.  I suspect that the value of the space in the County Times, at standard advertising rates, would come to a tidy sum, so there is a monetary value to this advantage he has.

If Francis Maude feels that incumbent MPs  should have no advantage over their opponents he should either give up his diary, pay for the space himself, or insist that the rest of us enjoy the same benefit – or insist that the same advantage is given to Crawley’s MP.

I shall raise this at the Horsham Labour Party  meeting tomorrow I think.