Representation of the People Bill

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Wednesday 2nd September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Florence Eshalomi]

I thank my right hon. Friend for making that important and valuable contribution. It is right that a number of amendments are seeking to limit donations originating from cryptoassets. We agree that the anonymity of crypto transactions creates a worrying route for illicit actors to channel money into our politics. This is an area that the Government are definitely keen to continue to review, ensuring that we end any unintended loopholes that may still arise.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

The Minister refers to crypto’s anonymity of source. Does she not agree that it is difficult to know what the attraction of crypto is, other than the fact it allows someone to hide where the money comes from? Why not just be straightforward and simply ban its use? Not a temporary ban or a moratorium—just ban it. Why cannot people simply give old-fashioned cash to support political parties?

[Florence Eshalomi]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee—I know that the Committee has looked at this. The ban will apply retrospectively, ensuring that any donations made after 25 March 2026 will be returned. As I mentioned earlier, we will continue to review the ban on cryptocurrency because this issue has cross-party support. We need to ensure that the money coming into our politics is clean and traceable.

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[Florence Eshalomi]

I thank the hon. Gentleman and refer him to my previous statement on this area.

[Emily Thornberry]

Will the Minister give way?

[Florence Eshalomi]

I need to make progress. I have a number of areas and amendments to cover, and many Members want to comment in the debate.

Overseas electors and those who fall under the minimum residency period will be required to provide a declaration of any necessary information to the recipient to enable them to check whether the donation is permissible. This declaration must be provided before the donation can be accepted. The cap will apply UK-wide and will operate consistently across the political finance regime across UK elections.

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[Katie Lam]

It is never anything but a pleasure to allow the hon. Gentleman to put Harlow into Hansard again, and I am happy to repeat his words. He is right: we must be incredibly vigilant. We must not be naive about the extent to which foreign powers are actively pursuing strategies to undermine our democracy, and ultimately, our nation. That must be treated with the utmost seriousness.

While some of the suggested changes are being rushed through in a sweeping way, we feel that the Bill has shockingly little to say about the threats to our democracy that we already know enough about to take decisive action on. This includes the effective disenfranchisement of many British citizens living overseas. Our citizens abroad remain citizens and are often directly affected by decisions taken by this Parliament, but all too often they find it very difficult to register to vote, or to cast their ballot. To that end, we have tabled amendments that require the Secretary of State to make provision for overseas voters to cast their votes in person at British embassies, high commissions and consulates.

Chief among the threats to our democracy today is the rise of coercion, fraud and sectarianism in our democratic process. These are, in turn, most often the result of a poisonous separatism that has taken hold in far too many of our towns and cities. Migration to this country has been far too high for far too long, against the wishes of the British people. Many of those who have come to this country come from cultures with very different norms from ours. At the same time, Britain has been complacent about enforcing our cultural and democratic norms, and far too tolerant of those who weaponise group-based identity politics for their own gain. One consequence has been the rise of explicitly sectarian political campaigning, whereby candidates appeal not to the individual interests of voters, or to the national interest, but to particular ethnic, religious or cultural groups. This is profoundly poisonous, and we must do everything that we can to root it out.

One symptom of this emergent separatism in our society is the rise of so-called family voting, whereby a senior male family member directs other members of their family, particularly women, on how they ought to vote. At the Gorton and Denton by-election earlier this year, volunteers reported

“the highest level of family voting at any election in the past decade.”

Family voting was observed at more than two thirds of polling stations. It may have influenced the votes of more than one in 10 people who turned out to cast their ballot. In Birmingham, at this year’s local elections, polling station staff reported instances of family voting in 50 polling stations. Despite evidence being passed to the police by the council, no further action has been taken

[Emily Thornberry]

The allegations that the hon. Lady makes are extremely serious, and should be based on robust evidence. To be told that “volunteers had reported” is not sufficient, and she must understand the implications of what she is saying, in terms of social coherence and undermining the very status of our democracy. I ask her to be a little more cautious, and to proceed on the basis of evidence.

[Katie Lam]

Polling station volunteers reporting what they have seen in their polling stations is evidence. It is not for us to decide what is appropriate to discuss in this Chamber. It is for us to talk about it, and for the public to decide. They can see this, and it was very well reported at the time.

Family voting is a direct assault on two important principles. The first is that each and every voter must be able to cast their ballot on the basis of their individual beliefs and interests. The second is that those ballots should be cast in secret, without pressure or oversight. These two principles are fundamental to the functioning of British democracy. That we live in a country where we have been able to take these things for granted is no small achievement, but it must be defended vigorously. Any practice that results in husbands instructing their wives how to vote, or allows fathers to instruct their daughters how to vote, is an insult to the liberties enjoyed by women in this country, and it must not be allowed to stand, yet this Labour Government have turned a blind eye. They have rejected Conservative proposals to strengthen enforcement of the Ballot Secrecy Act 2023. Indeed, they are scrapping guidance to local councillors and councils about how to stop family voting. Our proposed new clause 62 would help to tackle this catastrophe.

Another favoured tactic of sectarian candidates is the use of foreign language in their campaign material. To return to the Gorton and Denton by-election, during the campaign, the Green party published leaflets in Urdu telling voters that if they wanted to

“give the Muslims a strong voice, give your vote to the Greens.”

Depressingly, this is far from the only example, although it is one of the most reprehensible.

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[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

I applaud the Government’s ambitions in this Bill and the fact that they want to fix politics and for it to be fair and free from foreign interference. There is much to be enthusiastic about in the Bill, although in the five minutes I have been given to speak, I cannot go through it all. This might be the only such legislation that we have before the next general election, and I believe that it is incumbent upon us to prepare ourselves and our constitution for the possibility, God forbid, that a populist party might take control of our country. We are allowing ourselves to be wide open to all kinds of things.

The Foreign Affairs Committee did a report into foreign influence across Europe, and we saw a number of shocking things. I recommend the report to Members, if they are in any doubt about the ways in which malign actors, either state or non-state, are trying to influence and undermine democracies across Europe, but if we think that we are free of that because we are on the other side of the channel, we have got another think coming. We are so complacent about the things that can happen, that have happened and that might happen to our country next. We must protect ourselves. We must take this seriously.

There is not enough in this Bill to protect us. We must go further. I do not understand why we do not. For example, when it comes to disinformation from other countries trying to influence our democracy, how many Ministers do we have who are responsible for disinformation? We have seven. If we have seven Ministers for disinformation, we have no Minister for disinformation, but disinformation is undermining our democracy right now, and it will get worse coming up to the next general election. There is not enough in the Bill to be able to deal with that.

I ought to speak to my new clauses, including new clause 85, which are supported by the TUC and have been welcomed by Transparency International. I am proposing a complete ban on overseas voters donating to political parties. Why not? I do not understand why not. Rycroft says that foreign money is more difficult to trace and more difficult to ensure that it is clean. That is why he puts a £100,000 cap on it. Well, why do we not go further? We are the politicians. Why do we not just ban it? People can come to this country, live here, pay their taxes and get involved in our democracy. Then they can make donations. If they live somewhere else in a tax haven—tough, they cannot.

[Freddie van Mierlo (Henley and Thame) (LD)]

Is the right hon. Lady suggesting that all 3.5 million overseas electors should not be able to donate to political parties?

[Emily Thornberry]

Yes, I am. I am not getting into all the arguments about whether people who live abroad should have a vote—

[Freddie van Mierlo]

Will the right hon. Lady give way again?

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[Emily Thornberry]

No, I have only got two minutes. Come on!

People should just pay their taxes and get involved. New clause 86 proposes that a donor would have to be a total citizen. It is not enough to come back to Britain and go, “Oh well, I’m here now. I’m going to pay a little bit of tax because there are various tax dodges and I can do that.” No, they have to be here paying their full whack of taxes, and then they can make donations to political parties. If they care so much about Britain and about democracy, they should come here and be a full citizen, in my opinion.

My new clause 84 relates to descriptions on ballot papers. At the moment, instead of having just “the Labour party” on the ballot paper, it is possible to have “the Labour party, the party of equality and fairness”—fair enough. However, at the last local elections, the Greens registered candidates with the Electoral Commission as “first choice candidate” or “lead candidate”, so that, in an election with three votes, there was an instruction on the ballot paper as to who someone should vote for. That is an abuse, and it should be stopped. That is what that new clause is about.

New clause 87 is about ballot papers always being in alphabetical order. I speak as a T. My constituents had to look very hard to find me, and fortunately they did, but when we vote in alphabetical order, the Ts are at the far end—and there were hardly any of us. It is definitely an advantage to be at the beginning of the alphabet. Why do we not have the Australian system, and just randomise it?

There is so much more that we could do. Although there are rumours that a group may discuss how much more we can do, will there really be enough legislative time to bring forward another Bill that will deal with the many problems we have?

My predecessor, 180 years ago, was the MP for Finsbury, Thomas Slingsby Duncombe. He brought in the massive Chartist petition—3.3 million people wanting to be allowed to vote. So many people had signed it that they had to take the doors off the Chamber to get all the bits of paper through. Presumably it did not go into the Bag behind the Chair, but there was that much enthusiasm—that was what democracy was about. I do not want to be an MP for Finsbury who sits back complacently and allows our democracy to be undermined. We have to fight back.

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Reform)]

The Bill contains a lot of useful tightening of electoral law, and we are having a very important debate this afternoon. It is important that we think about how we police donations from abroad and from home. I pay tribute to the remarks made by the hon. Members for Hexham (Joe Morris) and for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Rushanara Ali) about the impact of algorithms, social media and deepfakes. There are clearly threats to our democracy from technology that the Bill does not closely address.

Let us face it: the Bill is not concerned with those questions. The claim is made that the Bill will defend democracy, but it is actually a flagrantly partisan attempt to kneecap Reform UK. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) and the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy)—always reliable—who made clear exactly what the Bill is about and who it is aimed at. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Walthamstow, too, for pointing out that the Bill exempts from any suggestion of a restriction donations by trade unions, which have given £17 million to the Labour party in the last five years, £10 million of that at the last election. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] They are delighted; they welcome it. Of course they are happy with that sort of support. This is partisan and highly partial legislation.

I put on record my resentment and outrage on behalf of the people who have generously given to Reform UK, whom the Minister called “malign actors”. I wonder who she is referring to. She is talking about individuals, British citizens, who have made money and are choosing to donate it in support of political causes that they believe in, as is their right.