Elections: Political Party Spending

Lord Evans of Weardale Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My noble friend makes a very important point, one that we have discussed in the Chamber before. I can assure her that the Government take the threat posed by disinformation and foreign actors interfering in our democratic processes very seriously. It is and always will be an absolute priority to protect the UK against foreign interference. While it is clear that foreign donations to political parties are not permitted, the Government recognise the risk posed by malign actors who seek to interfere with and undermine our democratic processes, which is why we will take all necessary steps to ensure that effective controls are in place to safeguard our democratic processes. As I said before, we plan to provide further details on our election strategy in the summer.

[Lord Evans of Weardale (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s undertaking to publish a strategy for electoral finance regulation. In so doing, may I encourage her to revisit the report by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, of which my colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey, was also a member at the time? We worked on the basis of evidence and had cross-party support for the various recommendations we made. Regrettably, the Government of the time decided to accept none of them, so this is an opportunity for the current Government to put right that error.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

As the work is being done to consider what needs to be in the electoral strategy, there have been a number of recent reports on elections and how they work. All the work done will be considered as we pull together the election strategy.