National Crime Agency: Reform Party Funding

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, on the subject of alleged dodgy donations, can the Minister update the House on whether the Cabinet Office or the Electoral Commission is able to commence or conclude inquiries into the £740,000 of secret, undeclared donations generated by Labour Together and funnelled to Labour Party members, including MPs Nick Thomas-Symonds, Darren Jones and others? Is he aware that calls for an independent inquiry were backed by Labour MPs in the other place via an EDM in May? Failure to properly deal with this scandal definitively simply undermines faith and trust in party funding and politics.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

What I will say to the noble Lord is that I think it is important we have clean financing of political parties. I refer him to the Rycroft review—let me say some of the things we have agreed and accepted that we will have: a cap on donations from overseas electors; a tightening of corporate donation rules; a moratorium on crypto donations, which will be of interest to my noble friend Lord Bassam; strengthened non-party campaigner and candidate controls; strengthened “know your donor” checks; and standardised political financing reporting. Any political party that wishes to adopt clean funding should sign up to those principles, and, when we bring measures before the House, I trust that the noble Lord will support them. I will look at what he said with regard to Labour Together, but I also say to him that we should try to take the party politics out of this and have an even and level playing field, so that all political parties know who has been funded, why and how, and ensure that those fundings are clean, transparent and open.