Representation of the People Bill

Luke Taylor Excerpts

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

[Katie Lam]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention.

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

Will the hon. Lady give way for a constructive question?

[Katie Lam]

I will give way one final time on this point.

[Luke Taylor]

I thank the hon. Lady for her patience. Does she see the conflict between addressing problems with family voting, which may well be caused by members of a family not having English as their first language, or as a language at all, and therefore needing to be informed in a language that they are comfortable with, and taking steps to restrict information being produced in a language that enables a family member to understand the arguments that are being made in an election? We can all agree that understanding the English language, which the vast majority of us speak, learning it and having access to it is important for integration, but does she not agree that these measures will have two conflicting outcomes? One is to restrict communication with all members of a family; the other is to ban their influence.

[Katie Lam]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, and I understand his point, but it is a deep, frightening and fundamental problem if we have people in this country who cannot operate in the shared language of our nation. I understand what he is saying, but there are two possible ways to deal with that problem, and I believe that the one he is suggesting will ultimately be deleterious to our nation and our democracy. We must make a choice—I think that is part of the point he is making—and I am making a different choice.

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[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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[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.

[Luke Taylor]

On that point, will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Danny Kruger]

No, I am not going to give way.

It is their right to support a political cause in their own country, where they are registered to vote and of which they are citizens. It is absolutely wrong to traduce them in that way.

Some suggest that the Bill will restore trust in politics, which is exactly what is needed, but what they mean is restore trust in the class of politicians and in the political parties that have got us into the mess that we are in—[Interruption]—including, I am afraid to say, the party of which I was a part. That is why I left it. We need change.

I am glad to say that our democracy is actually working. A new force is arising, and it will put the interests of the British people, not the class of politicians and parties that got us into this mess, first. That is what the populist revolt is doing, demonstrating the effectiveness and vibrancy of our democracy.

Let me turn to the amendments that I support, because we do have a real threat to our democracy, and let me make these points as seriously and soberly as I can. Our democracy is underwired by a series of principles and practices that were traditionally historically implicit in the system and therefore did not need to be stated. They did not need to be stated, but now they do, and they need to be stated because over the last couple of generations, we have brought into this country millions of people, many of whom do not understand or honour those implicit principles.

Let me go through the changes that are necessary to make explicit formerly implicit principles. The first is that voters belong to this country, that they are citizens of this country with the allegiance and commitment that that brings. There were historically exceptions made for small numbers of Commonwealth citizens and Irish citizens who were in this country. That now needs to change. The number of Irish citizens is still very low, but there are now 2.5 million Commonwealth citizens resident in this country who are entitled to vote in our elections who are not citizens of the United Kingdom. That is wrong; it is time to correct that anomaly.