Political Donations

Debate between Alex Sobel and Emily Darlington

Monday 31st March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairwomanship, Mrs Harris. In the interests of transparency, I would like to declare that I have received no donations from business, but I have received donations from UK citizens, including via the trade union GMB, of which I am a member, and through fundraising dinners and quizzes in my constituency, which anyone is welcome to attend.

I would like to thank Mr Stone for starting this petition and having such great success in raising the issue with the public right across the country. We cannot be complacent in protecting our democratic rights, and we must take heed of what has happened elsewhere. When the US relaxed funding laws, it changed the course of election costs. In 1990, the average cost of a successful campaign to the House of Representatives was $981,000, while a successful Senate race cost an average of $9.3 million. In 2022, after the relaxation of the political donations legislation, the average cost of a successful campaign for the House of Representatives was $3 million, while the average cost of a successful Senate campaign was $28.5 million. We cannot afford to let that happen within the UK.

Standing for Parliament is an honour and a privilege, but not only for those who can afford it or have rich friends; it is for those who come from all walks of life. One of the big loopholes that I perceive within our campaign finance rules—I hope that the Minister will consider it in fulfilling the campaign pledge in our manifesto to clean up political donations—is the rules for political party spending and the long and the short campaign. Although we have rules for the short campaign that are adhered to in the final few weeks, we do not have a consistent set of rules for the 55 months when political parties of any sort are campaigning.

The rise of online spend is much more difficult to track and understand. As the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) mentioned, there are ways of supporting political parties that are not always about straight donations, but that can be done through algorithms and other online activity. I will not mention any particular Member, but I will mention the behaviour of two parties when it comes to donations received. We have people with backgrounds very much linked to tax havens, such as the billionaire property developer Nick Candy, who is one of the main fundraisers for the Reform party. He is also a link between the Reform party and Trump and Elon Musk. He was very clear when he told The New York Times,

“We are going to have fund-raisers all over the world, in every part of the world where there are British nationals”—

not necessarily British taxpayers. He went on:

“We will have fund-raisers in the US, in Monaco, and we will have huge fund-raisers in the UAE, where we have an expat community there who are unhappy with the amount of regulation and tax in the UK.”

To be clear, he is the UK treasurer for the Reform party. We need to close the loophole, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and Solway (Markus Campbell-Savours) said earlier. If someone is not a UK taxpayer, they should not be funding a political party in order to create outcomes around regulation and tax. There are other examples I could point to, and I am sure many will.

[Alex Sobel]

I am sure my hon. Friend knows of the Carlton Club, which is a private and unincorporated association with close links to the Conservative party. It has received over £200,000 in donations from companies run by wealthy Swiss, German and Russian nationals. Over the same period, since 2020, the Carlton Club has donated £312,000 to the Conservative party. Do we not need to remove the ability to use unincorporated associations to wash money that would otherwise not be able to be donated?

[Emily Darlington]

That is a very good foray into my last point. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to mention unincorporated companies or LLCs that are not transparent about where their money comes from. I have to ask why businesses are the ones giving money in the first place. I always think: what is the reward? I understand it better when it comes from a trade union that represents millions of workers. The trade union pulls together donations. Its members are asked whether they want to donate. Under the current legislation, they are asked whether they are happy to pay their dues and make political donations. Those individuals work and pay tax here in this country. But when there is a lack of transparency and the public cannot see how much money the company is making and then donating—the Carlton Club may fit into that; I have never been there, but I hear it is pretty lavish—that is the final loophole that I ask the Minister to consider.

I end my comments there because I know that many colleagues want to speak. I ask the Minister to consider my points and take action.