Foreign Interference in UK Politics

Debate between Baroness O'Neill of Bexley and Lord Pack

Thursday 9th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O’Neill of Bexley (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the opportunity to ask questions on this Statement and thank Philip Rycroft for his thorough review. We on these Benches have consistently supported measures to tackle foreign interference in our democracy and recognise the value of Philip Rycroft’s review. However, an independent review is not a substitute for ministerial engagement with political parties where recommendations affect the rules by which political parties compete with one another. The Government have traditionally sought broad political agreement before legislating.

The threats posed by hostile states are real and growing, so protecting the integrity of our democratic system is fundamental to maintaining public confidence in our elections. Every political party represented in this House has a shared interest in ensuring that foreign interference, illicit finance and attempts to undermine our democratic processes are robustly addressed. However, we remain concerned about both the process the Government have adopted and aspects of the proposals now being taken forward.

As my noble friend Lady Finn said during last week’s debate, there is a simple constitutional principle at stake. The rules governing political finance are not ordinary legislation; they are the rules by which political parties compete with one another. Governments are therefore the trustees of those rules, not their proprietors. The reason why that convention exists is straightforward: Governments should not use their parliamentary majority unilaterally to legislate on the finances of their political opponents. Once that principle is abandoned, it becomes easier for future Governments of any political persuasion to do the same and risks importing the kind of hyper-partisan approach to electoral law that has proved so damaging elsewhere.

For many years, Governments of all political persuasions have recognised that changes in this area should, where possible, be developed through consultation and broad cross-party agreements, rather than imposed unilaterally by the Government of the day. That is why the Government’s approach is so disappointing. Rather than waiting for Philip Rycroft’s review to conclude, Ministers introduced the Representation of the People Bill before publishing their response. They have now chosen to cherry-pick two recommendations from that review and insert them into the Bill through significant government amendments during the stages in the other place without first engaging in proper cross-party talks. Simply informing political parties of changes after they have already been drafted is not consultation. Why did the Government not publish a consultation paper, formal or informal, or convene proper cross-party discussions before deciding to legislate?

Constitutional conventions exist precisely because changes to the rules of democratic competition should not come as a surprise to those expected to operate within them. An independent review is valuable, but it is not a suitable political consensus on the rules governing political competition. However, the Government have immediately accepted two recommendations from the Rycroft review—a moratorium on cryptocurrency and a £100,000 annual cap on donations from overseas electors—before publishing their full response to the review or consulting political parties on how these proposals should operate.

More troubling still, these measures are intended to have a retrospective effect from March this year. Political parties are therefore expected to comply with legal requirements whose detailed legislative provisions have not yet been debated by Parliament or, indeed, published in draft. That is full-on retrospective legislation and is constitutionally very difficult to justify.

More fundamentally, why was the Representation of the People Bill introduced before the Rycroft review had reported? Given that there was no imminent general election, why did Ministers not pause the Bill for a matter of weeks to bring forward a coherent package of reforms? Alternatively, if the Government wished to proceed urgently with electoral reforms, why were the political finance provisions not introduced in separate legislation, as previous Governments have done? Can the Minister also outline the consultation that has taken place with the Electoral Commission, parliamentary authorities and political parties on these proposals? What additional resources will be provided to ensure that any new regulatory responsibilities can be implemented effectively?

Finally, legislation is only one part of the answer. Effective enforcement is equally important. Can the Minister therefore tell the House what additional resource will be provided to the Electoral Commission, and to any other enforcement bodies, to ensure that these reforms can be properly implemented and enforced?

Good policy requires more than good intentions; it requires proper consultation, careful scrutiny and, in this area above all, broad political consensus. We will continue to support proportionate measures that genuinely strengthen our democracy against foreign interference, but we urge the Government to return to the long-established constitutional principle that the rules governing political competition should be made with political parties, not simply imposed upon them. Protecting our democracy should unite Parliament and not become another area for partisan legislation.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, I will resist the temptation to ask the Minister to remind us what consultation the previous Conservative Government carried out with either his party or mine over, for example, changing the electoral system for elections of mayors or expense limits for general elections.

Instead, to go to the heart of the matter, these Benches very much share the concerns set out in the Rycroft review about the risk of foreign money influencing, or even corrupting, our politics. We therefore broadly welcome the Government’s commitment to implementing the report. However, I have some concerns about the intended speed of implementation, some of the loopholes that will remain, and one particular issue that is not mentioned in the Government’s response, which I suspect the Minister can successfully predict.

I turn first to the intended pace of implementation. On recommendation 4, regarding non-party campaigners and related issues, the Government have said they will

“commit to consultation and further work”.

They are not even committing to action on that one. On recommendation 14, on internet advertising, the Government have promised “proposals in due course”. On recommendation 16, on think tanks and associated issues, the Government’s commitment is that they will

“consider opportunities for further work”.

I fear that you can almost hear the wheels of Whitehall grinding to a halt as you consider that phrase. I hope the Minister can set out clear timelines for the Government’s intended progress on those recommendations, which are, after all, on substantive major issues such as the role of online advertising.

On loopholes, I have raised before the question of the Government’s apparent inconsistent approach to politics and the media. They appear to be sticking to a significant control test for companies that permits greater foreign ownership of a company that donates to our politics than is permitted for a company that owns one of our newspapers. It remains unclear to me why the Government think that a lower level of protection against foreign interference in our politics than in our media is appropriate. I hope the Minister might be able to clarify that.

The Government are proposing—in a broad sense, this is a welcome step in the right direction—introducing a new threshold of £2,230, above which pre-campaign donations to individual candidates would need to be declared. That sounds a reasonable threshold, until one remembers that British-wide political parties will typically stand 633 candidates across the country, or, if not contesting the Speaker’s seat, 632 candidates. Therefore, 632 lots of some £2,000 gets you to nearly £1.5 million-worth of donations that could be made legally, legitimately and in secret, unless the Government also propose to go a little further and introduce aggregation requirements around those donations to individual candidates. I hope the Minister can tell us what is intended on that front.

Indeed, the Government Statement is rather silent on whether similar protection will be extended to, for example, elections for the Mayor of Greater Manchester or the Mayor of London. Those, among other elected posts at other levels of election, have important power, and, although we have not yet had a track record of having to worry about foreign money in such elections, it would seem to me prudent to extend such protections.

Finally, I turn to the consolidation of election law and the dangers, costs and complexity that arise from the messy and fragile state of election law, In the past, I have used the parallel of a teenager with a messy bedroom—the Government never quite decide that now is the time to start cleaning up that bedroom The Rycroft review said:

“I urge Government to consider”


action in this area. Because that was a boxed-out urging of the Government to consider, rather than a formal recommendation, the Government’s response so far has been silent on that particular part of the Rycroft review. I hope the Minister, having been urged by Rycroft to consider this issue, can tell us what consideration the Government have come to.

To push on one specific example, consolidation does not have to a be a big project, put off for ever only to be done in one big bang. It is possible to pick off little individual issues. For example, it is possible to look at redundant legislation on the statute book, the repeal of which would have no or only minimal knock-on consequences. It is a bit like picking up the dirty crisp packet from the middle of the floor—we are not going to tidy the whole bedroom but can at least pick up some of the easy bits. I have one specific question. The Parliamentary Elections Act 1695 seems to me to be the perfect crisp packet—an easy thing that could be picked off and repealed under the Representation of the People Bill. I hope the Minister can tell us that that is going to be added to the Government’s plans.