Political Donations

Bell Ribeiro-Addy Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Harris. I am proud to declare my membership of Unite the union. I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests for support I have received from other unions, because trade union money is the cleanest money in politics; we know exactly where it comes from.

We all know the saying, “Money is power,” and I would hope that none of us are naive enough to think that this does not apply to the UK. If we want to create a democratic system where everyone’s vote has equal value, we need strong protections in place to prevent the very richest individuals in our society from warping our democracy. As we heard today, we are not the worst in the world. I remember a visit I took with you, Mrs Harris, on an international delegation, during which I spoke to a Member of Parliament from another country, which I will not name. We got talking about election spending limits for individual candidates. When I told them what it was in the UK, they turned to me and said, “What are you going to buy with that?” But just because we are not as bad as some does not mean that we cannot do better—and we have to do better, because public confidence in the financial transparency of our system has plummeted.

Just 15% of Brits surveyed by the Electoral Commission last year believed that spending and funding is transparent in our system. Sadly, the evidence shows that this is a problem of trust, as big money continues to have a corrosive influence on our politics. The last Government stripped the Electoral Commission of its ability to prosecute criminal offences and placed it under ministerial control—hardly impartial. As well as manoeuvring the electoral system further in their favour, the last Government quietly passed a statutory instrument to raise campaign spending limits. National election spending caps rose by 80%, and the amount of money that an individual can donate to a party without declaring who donated it rose from £7,500 to £11,180.

I am sure that there will be some Members who think that there is nothing wrong with very wealthy people putting their money behind a party that reflects their principles, but why should we not know who they are? We have to be a little more clear-sighted about the reality: first, because of the size and scale of these donations; and secondly, because if we follow the money, we notice a pattern of some people suspiciously changing teams whenever we are about to see a changing of the guard. It would be naive to suggest that large donors are doing this purely out of the goodness of their own hearts.

I was alarmed to read the recent report by Transparency International, which found that 10% of all UK political donations originate from dubious sources. That is because it suited the last Government to allow front companies, which are set up for the sole purpose of laundering money. I was unsurprised to read that two thirds of that dark money went to the Conservative party. While I am pleased that my party in government has introduced the foreign influence registration scheme, I am concerned by reports that we may have not moved further on plans to ban any foreign political donations. This should not be a left or right issue—it just has to be based on the idea that every vote is worth the same.

It goes without saying that people like the owner of the social media website that I will only ever call Twitter, who is not even registered to vote in the UK, does not own companies incorporated in the UK and invariably avoids paying his full share of tax in the UK, should not be free to throw money at our politics, but here we are. The wealthiest man in the world could conceivably shower huge sums on any party that will help him to advance his divide and rule politics, which are designed to protect his vast wealth. This exemplifies why we need to get big money out of our politics and protect it from the undue influence of the super-rich.

The Institute for Public Policy Research has recommended capping individual and corporate donations to political parties at £100,000 a year. That seems like a modest starting point. We need a crackdown on dark money entering via shell companies that have never turned a profit in the UK and through unincorporated associations with no legal requirement to disclose their funders. We should also reinstate the Electoral Commission’s ability to monitor and prosecute offences and put the resources it needs behind that—nothing hon. Members have not already heard today. I would also like to see my Government revisit the proposals to ensure that individuals donors are registered electors and that companies that donate are owned by people who live in Britain and pay their fair share of tax here. That is extremely important.

Political funding is not the only way that the very rich are able to exert undue influence. However, it is the most obvious place where we can take decisive action now. After a decade in which billionaire donors more than trebled their wealth and working people saw the biggest pay squeeze since the Napoleonic wars, we absolutely need change.