I don't understand how the 50k limit can really work - it is too easy to bypass by using other legal entities.

Simplest is using subsidiaries or other group companies to make a £50k donation each. Unions might be able to use semi-independent branches to do this. These can probably be outlawed.

A small to medium company could use friendly suppliers: "I'll give you an extra £55k on this contract, if you donate to the Tories". Or they could employ an individual contractor (PR perhaps) on a £60k job, who has previously conveniently made a £50k donation, who then writes a simple report.  Pretty much impossible to stop.

At 50k, it's even not much of a cost to create a new legal company to make the donation.

Of course using family and friends is a another approach. 

The Tories have much better access to these methods than the Labour movement. I've wondered if that's why they suggest £50k - it only requires 10 such schemes to donate half a million, easy to do. If the limit was £1k, then these avoidance measures would no longer be easy or economic to follow.

Seems to me we'd be setting the scene for more such subterfuges as we've seen with Abrahams in the last week.

Everyone seems to be getting a bit over-excited about this.  It is far from clear that reforming party funding would break the link with the unions.  Union donations are already very heavily regulated and there is a perfectly legitimate case for having separate regulatory regimes for unions as opposed to businesses and individuals.

The risk with that strategy is that if the Tories win the next election, they would almost certainly legislate to put unions under the same regulations as for businesses, which would effectively break the link.  Of course the best way to avoid that is for us to be the next government...

Well, I expect it is just me, because I've not read all the press and only read the text of Brown's speech as it is printed on the Labour party web site, but is this necessaarily what he is saying?

As I read it, his speech is a recognition that if we are to move forward with further controls on individual donations and on spending at local level - both changes which I believe we should support but which can be construed as affecting the Tories more than us - then there will be further discussion about the trade union funding and the individual levy.

I believe that the trade union levy IS different from a cap on donations from organisations. But I also recognise that we have a fight on our hands to make the point to the public.

An attempt to simply limit any union donation to £50k would fundamentally change the nature of the Labour party. We should make that case and we should make the case that attempts to limit union donations completely by the Tories does represent a fundamental attack on our party, and on the principle of political representation for working people.  But to win that argument, we have to create the positive case for collective individual contributions through the union structure - and we have to do a bit more work with our union colleagues on making that link much more real and much more effective.

That's the fight right now for all of us in the Labour party. It's a fight with the Tories - did no one else see David Cameron on AM this morning in effect describe union funding for Labour as the biggest remaining scandal in British political funding - and that matters much, much more than any difference of emphasis we may have internally about the nature and role of union funding.