Prospective parliamentary candidate
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A prospective parliamentary candidate (often abbreviated as PPC) was a role in politics in the United Kingdom. Parliamentary candidates were selected by political parties to fight each individual constituencies in advance of each general election. However, because there was a strict limit on the amount of expenses that could be incurred by an actual candidate (whether or not the election had been formally called), the candidates were termed 'prospective' so that anything spent to promote them would not come under the limit.
In 2004 the law was changed so that the limit on election expenses begins only once an election has been called, and so the term is now obsolete. Increasingly before this time, political parties had avoided using this term, perceiving that voters were confused by it, in favour of vague terms such as 'Parliamentary spokesman'.
