Representation of the People Bill

Judith Cummins Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 2nd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Bonavia]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order. The shadow Secretary of State is not giving way.

[Sir James Cleverly]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, I respect him enormously, but there are a number of other points that I want to make. If he thinks he can answer the question that I have posed, let him do so. OK, here we go.

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[Rushanara Ali]

I thank the hon. Member for making that point. We have to take action against racism, anti-Muslim hatred, antisemitism and other forms of hostility and hatred towards particular groups in our society, especially those with protected characteristics. There are laws in place that need to be enforced, and those laws are often breached online. We must ensure that we take responsibility and show leadership in the way we conduct ourselves. Otherwise, we are going to see those with protected characteristics being driven out of public life. I am seeing that already in local communities and of course in our Parliament, because of what we are experiencing.

In conclusion, our democracy is fragile, and it must be supported and strengthened in the face of rapid change and the threats from foreign interference. It is our duty to be stewards of our democracy, leaving it in a better place than we found it. It is at the heart of our liberty and our citizenship, and we must defend it, nurture it and future-proof it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Members will have noticed that we have many, many more Members on their feet than we have time allocated, so we will start with a five-minute limit.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I will reduce the time limit after the next speech to four minutes. I call Navendu Mishra on a five-minute time limit.

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[Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I believe that I heard the hon. Gentleman accuse a political party in the Chamber of a “criminal abuse of democracy”. Did I hear that correctly? Is that remark in order, or does the hon. Gentleman—I use that word loosely—now need to back up his allegation with some hard evidence?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I am hoping that the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) will reconsider his words and withdraw them.

[Danny Kruger]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sorry if I inadvertently suggested that it was a party that was abusing our electoral system. What I am actually suggesting is that there is abuse of our electoral system through an influential network that applies in these constituencies. That appears to be the case.

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[Lisa Smart]

The hon. Gentleman rightly mentioned the work of Democracy Volunteers, which is a long established and well—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I call Emily Darlington.

Representation of the People Bill

Judith Cummins Excerpts

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

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I will put in place an immediate five-minute time limit.

[Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)]

I will speak in favour of new clause 88, tabled by the Liberal Democrats, which would require the Government to establish a royal commission on political donations and campaign expenditure. It would examine the case for a donations cap review and whether existing campaign spending limits remain effective, and would report back within 12 months. Crucially, it would take account of the modern flavours of old challenges, because money can now shape political debate through social media platforms, algorithmic amplification, third-party campaigning and political advertising that can reach millions of voters almost immediately.

When we knock on doors in our constituencies, or even when they are only our prospective constituencies, we are taking part in the most important act of our democratic system. We are listening to the concerns of citizens. We are empowering them to test us on our politics and to push us to champion their causes, and through taking forward the electorate’s concerns, we are giving them a voice. The principle is simple: one citizen, one vote. It is the basis of a democratic system. If a voter is particularly taken by our arguments, they may choose to donate to us to cover the cost of those snappy little pamphlets we leave behind in our wake, which some on the Liberal Democrat Benches are particularly passionate about.

At this point, I will explain something that we did in Sutton to welcome the huge number of Hongkongers who moved to our borough and to my constituency over the last few years. We produced leaflets in their local language, so that those who did not have particularly strong English skills could read the information about our political party. They had travelled here, escaping the Communist regime to take part in a democratic process, and escaping the crackdown on democratic rights in Hong Kong. I invite an intervention from the Conservative Benches to explain why that communication, in a language that was understood by those who had not long been in our country and did not have the language skills to understand the English leaflets, is such a bad thing. There are none.

When our election laws were written, donations to political parties would have probably have been covered by the existing laws. Maybe a big local donor would pay for an advertising board, or for posters and a loudspeaker on the roof rack of a clapped-out old Volvo of the kind that my dad used to go around his prospective constituency in the ’90s. However, our citizens still held the levers of power relatively directly. Today, the spending in our politics, and therefore the influence and power of money and donors, has shifted so dramatically that the question is how we rise to the challenge of constantly having to patch the cracks and the potholes in our outdated election law.

If we fail to answer that question, we condemn the voting public to powerlessness, as those with the deepest pockets and strongest influence rip our hands off the wheel of the ship of state. We cannot fail to address the modern challenges first posed by those who bankrolled the Brexit campaign, who promised to give back control to the public and then handed it straight to their oligarch friends. For those reasons, I was disappointed the Government did not use this Bill to introduce a meaningful cap on political donations.

Wealthy individuals are increasingly able to spend sums that would be completely beyond the reach of ordinary voters, while public confidence in the way politics is funded remains extremely weak. We can see how members of two parties in this Chamber have received more than £56,000 through X, a company owned by the very model of a modern fascist oligarch. It has an algorithm that he designs and the payments are therefore decided and funnelled directly to those political actors.

There will always be those with bigger pockets who can make a larger contribution to political parties and projects than others. The vast majority do so for the right, philanthropic or ideological, reasons. The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) has given a passionate explanation of why political donation through unions, with proper controls, is absolutely an appropriate way to deliver political support and political power to those groups of people who need that representation the most. However, when money has been flowing in from those who would do our country harm and who want to rip control of the state away from the voting public and turn our nation into a Russian-style oligarchy, and when democratic institutions are just shopfronts for a nefarious state captured by the rich and powerful, we cannot stand idly by. That is why new clause 88 is so important.

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[Luke Akehurst]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the objective of the new clause that we are not talking about, because it is not in—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order. I remind Members that discussion of an amendment that is not in scope and has not been selected, is not in scope.

[Darren Paffey]

My point is that in addressing amendments 69,70, 80, 120, 72 and 48, as I intend to, there is a context. Many of us believe that the world of two-party politics no longer exists, and we need a political system that supports what every other amendment and every other part of the Bill seeks to do.

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[Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

I would like to speak to amendment 15 and new clause 30, tabled in my name, and to new clauses tabled by other colleagues from across the House. First of all, I welcome the new Minister to her place and I welcome the Bill. I always like to start where there is common ground. It is certainly true that there are steps forward in the Bill: the implementation of the Rycroft recommendations to tackle foreign influence in our politics; movements towards automatic voter registration; and dealing with crypto to some extent, although not enough. Those are all positive steps forward. I also warmly welcome the introduction of votes at 16, which is a long-standing Green party policy.

But—there is a big but, I am afraid, Minister—the Bill could and really should do far, far more to clean up our politics. There are three big things that we need to do: get rid of the influence of dirty and big money in our politics; eliminate the poison of disinformation in our politics; and fix the fundamental structures of our politics that disenfranchise so many people. It is therefore frankly ridiculous that in a Bill about elections called the Representation of the People Bill we are not even allowed to discuss new clause 31 on a national commission on electoral reform. This is fundamentally important to our politics. The fundamental principle of democracy is that everybody’s vote must count equally.

The Government, of course, do not need to legislate on a national commission on electoral reform. They could kickstart one anyway. I really hope that the Minister will take that back to the Prime Minister—who, after all, is supposedly a supporter of electoral reform—and strongly encourage him to put his action where his mouth is on this issue and demonstrate that, if he is serious about problem-solving, he needs to work to solve the problems in our democracy.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order. Will the hon. Member please remember to keep her speech within the scope of what is currently before us?

[Dr Chowns]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was speaking in relation to the title of the Bill.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I ask the hon. Member please to take my comments as they were made, and stick to the scope of the Bill.

[Dr Chowns]

I will move on to my amendments, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Amendment 15 seeks to ban all corporate donations. Donations from companies are banned in France and Canada, among many other countries. According to research conducted by CenTax, about a quarter of donor companies are so opaque that it is not possible to identify who controls them, and almost £1 in every £10 given by companies comes, indirectly, from people who could not make donations themselves. This is a loophole in our politics. The Bill already accepts that a company has no independent right to donate, as it depends on the individuals who own it being on the electoral register, so it makes sense to complete the step and ban corporate donations altogether. If the House is not willing to go as far as a ban, it can still strengthen the Bill by strengthening clause 60.

I have also tabled new clause 30, which calls for

“a review of how campaign expenditure limits could apply on an annual basis”.

The new clause would deal with another huge loophole. We recognise that money skews politics; that is why there are spending limits during the short campaign; but we know that politics does not happen just in that short period before an election. Politics happens all the year round, especially now that the online world is such a big part of our politics. Long gone are the days when elections were fought only in those short weeks. Political campaigning happens throughout the year, not just on doorsteps but also online, and it is therefore imperative to place limits on annual campaign expenditure to prevent our politics from being skewed out of all proportion by big money. That is why I support new clause 70, tabled by the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), which would lower limits for campaign spending altogether.

In her new clause 120, the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) makes a clear case for a cap on all donations. Big money has been allowed to skew our politics for far too long. I would prefer the cap to be much lower, perhaps at £50,000 a year, and that view is supported by the majority of the British people, but any move in that direction would be an improvement.

Moreover, some donations simply should not be allowed. I welcome new clause 22, tabled by the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon): there is no place for fossil fuels in a sustainable future, and no place for dirty fossil money in our politics.

I also welcome the new clauses tabled by the hon. Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington), particularly new clause 43, which calls for

“a repository of digital political advertising”.

This is absolutely crucial: we have to guard against the use of AI to fuel disinformation. We have to take big money out of politics, take the poison of disinformation out of politics, and fix our political system once and for all.