Political Donations

Jamie Stone Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Irene Campbell (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 707189 relating to the rules for political donations.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Harris. I begin by thanking Mr Jeremy Stone, who is here today, for starting this petition, and congratulate him on gathering more than 140,000 signatures, which is a fantastic feat. The petition, titled “Tighten the rules on political donations”, states:

“We want the government to…Remove loopholes that allow wealthy foreign individuals to make donations into UK political parties (e.g. by funnelling through UK registered companies)…Cap all donations to a reasonable amount…Review limits on the fines that can be levied for breaking the rules…We think that ultra-rich individuals or foreign state actors should not be able to use their money to give unfair advantage to a political party in order to further their own agenda.”

I think that is a principle that all of us here will agree with—that foreign interference through donations has no place in British elections or politics, and that democracy cannot be for sale.

I declare an interest: I am a member of Unite the union and I have received donations from both Unite and the Communications Workers Union, the full details of which are freely available on my MP profile on the UK Parliament website. Functions like this mean that we, as MPs, can be constantly transparent and honest to our constituents about where money is flowing in politics. As a member of a political party, I am very aware of how much parties rely on donations; however, donations can become concerning when their origins are unclear and the public cannot be sure whether some foreign interference, or any other suspicious dealings, may have slipped through the cracks in the rules.

About a month ago, my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton) introduced a similar debate on political finance rules, which covered a lot of the points that I am sure will be mentioned again today. He similarly began by declaring his interest of being a member of a political party, a sentiment that many others here will echo. He used his speech to highlight Transparency International’s research on questionable sources of donations.

In particular, the group found that almost £1 in every £10 reported by political parties and their members since 2001 has come from unknown or questionable sources. Some £13 million comes from donors who are alleged, or proven, to be intermediaries for foreign funds or hidden sources; £10.9 million comes from companies that have not made sufficient profits to support the political contributions that they have made; and £4.6 million comes from foreign Governments, Parliaments and regime-linked groups.

Reported donations from private sources are growing, from £30.6 million in 2001 to £85 million in 2023. That is unsurprising, given that, in this period, former Governments increased campaign spending limits by 45% to be in line with inflation, meaning that the larger parties’ de facto fundraising targets rose to around £100 million in the major election years. The previous Government also increased the threshold for reporting donations by 50% in 2023, thus demonstrating how complex the system is.

Alongside that, the Elections Act 2022 constrained the independence of the Electoral Commission and banned it from prosecuting criminal offences under electoral law. The Electoral Commission said:

“The UK Government does not consider this to be an area of work we should undertake and considered it to duplicate the work of the Crown Prosecution Service…and Public Prosecution Service Northern Ireland”.

Ministers can now even set the Electoral Commission’s strategy and policy priorities through their own strategy and policy statements. Transparency International said:

“This is inconsistent with international good practice, unnecessary, and fetters the Commission’s independence.”

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

The hon. Member is making a very good speech. With her permission, I might just broaden the concept of a political donation, because, in many ways, it is not always quite as simple as a cheque hitting a given political party’s bank account. Whatever one thought of him—he was a great man in Scottish politics, and is no longer with us—it is a fact that Alex Salmond, for a number of years, hosted a show in his own name on RT, a Russian television channel, on which he, on a regular basis, put forward views that were not always particularly helpful to the concept of a United Kingdom. That seems to me to be a subtle way of foreign Governments influencing decisions and trying to interfere.

[Irene Campbell]

I thank the hon. Member for his contribution, and I agree with his point.

At the time of the Elections Act 2022, the House of Commons Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, whose corresponding Department was responsible for introducing the Act, also concluded that there was no need for such statements and no evidence to justify their introduction. The recent Backbench Business Committee debate on political finance rules mentioned some case studies and evidence from previous elections of overseas donations. For example, the 2020 report of the Intelligence and Security Committee found that Russian oligarchs had used their business interests, donations to charities and political parties to influence UK affairs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

Thank you, Mrs Harris. I do not want to add much to what I said in my intervention. This is a very dangerous principle. I have people saying to me in the street, “It’s getting like America—you can buy political results, politicians and policies.” This strikes me as fundamentally dangerous. We call ourselves the mother of Parliaments, and we pride ourselves on the way we do democracy in this country. Every time such things are said to me, I feel that another little brick has been taken out of the edifice of what we do.

As the Chair of the Petitions Committee, I thank the petitioners for bringing forward the petition, which expresses what an awful lot of people out there think. The very fact that the Committee, which I have the honour of chairing, gets the honour of a Government reply each time we have a petitions debate strikes me as a very good thing indeed.

I will leave my comments there. As I said in my intervention, there are more subtle ways of influencing politics in any country than a cheque or cash in the bank. We need to be constantly vigilant.