Let me start by saying I have great faith in the British public. I do not think the British public can be bought or easily swayed; they will decide at the next election who should govern the country.
To protect the UK’s sovereignty and to maintain trust in political processes, Members of Parliament and political parties are expected to uphold high standards of conduct, avoiding financial dependence on foreign donors. The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority helps to ensure that their conduct aligns with these expectations.
There is a long-standing principle that only those on the UK electoral register are permissible political donors. This is upheld by a framework of laws and established standards enforced by the Electoral Commission, the independent body that regulates political finance in the UK.
Under current law, parties must report donations to the Electoral Commission if they total over £11,180 from the same source in a calendar year. Donations over £2,230 from the same source above this initial £11,180 amount in the same calendar year must also be reported.
The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 states that UK political parties must only accept donations from permissible donors. The Electoral Commission’s guidelines make clear that a party that receives a donation that is not from a permissible donor must return this donation within 30 days. Parties that do not comply may be subject to civil sanctions and the party and treasurer responsible may also have committed criminal offences.
Following the Committee on Standards in Public Life’s 1998 recommendations on the funding of political parties in the UK, the Companies Act 2006 requires companies making political donations to obtain the prior authority of their shareholders; this applies to all political donations, regardless of the amount. The previous Government also brought forward the Elections Act 2022, which restricts third-party campaigning to UK-based groups and eligible overseas electors so that only those with legitimate interests in UK elections can campaign at UK elections.
It is important that our democracy is not subject to subversive foreign influences and I fully support working with the Government to ensure that our political finance laws are strong enough to protect our democracy.
I understand the Government will set out their plans for changes to political finance law in due course. It is a long-standing convention that the Government consults with other political parties on changes to political finance rules, so as to not impose measures affecting political finance to their own partisan advantage. I am deeply disappointed therefore with the Government's failure to adequately consult the other political parties on these changes ahead of this announcement. Regardless, I shall continue to follow this matter closely, and I look forward to scrutinising the Government's proposals once further details are made available.
While this statement has been published in response to those constituents who have written to me worried about potential political donations from Elon Musk and other foreign influences, I would also like to address their concerns around the comments he made at the protests on the 13th of September which I feel were unacceptable and unhelpful.
It is important to distinguish between strongly felt political debate on the one hand, and unacceptable acts of abuse, intimidation and violence on the other. British democracy has always been robust and oppositional, but there can never be an excuse to shout down democratic process or to seek social change through force rather than the force of argument. I believe this principle is absolutely central to Britain’s success as a democracy and I repeat here what I said in my statement on Proscribing Palestine Action - we abuse this system at our peril.
It is vital that we as MPs respond to the public honestly on the complex challenges facing our society, however difficult or unpalatable they may be. We must take effective action to improve people’s lives, so that those who seek to exploit public concern, from whichever side of the political spectrum, cannot use people’s worries to serve their own ends.
