Political Donations

Phil Brickell Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Harris. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell) for leading this important debate. I rise to speak on behalf of the 177 people in Bolton West who signed the petition.

Before I came to this place I dedicated more than a decade of my career to tackling bribery and corruption in all its forms across the UK, India, the UAE and the US, so I have a professional imperative to speak out on cleaning up our politics, as well as a moral one. That is why I have been campaigning on the issue week in, week out since I was elected to this place in July of last year. I was pleased to attend the launch of Transparency International’s “Checks and Balances” report in the autumn of last year, along with the anti-corruption champion, Baroness Margaret Hodge.

Having pored over the petition data in granular detail, I know that this is one of the rare issues that cuts across north and south, blue and red, and urban and rural. We all want our politics to be clean and fair so that it can deliver the very best outcomes for our constituents. For me, that is the heart of the issue that we are discussing. Our democracy relies heavily on donations to provide funding for parties and candidates to engage with the electorate.

However, recent scandals across all major parties involving donations being linked to criminal, unknown or potentially malign foreign sources have led to some of the lowest levels of public trust that we have ever seen. Only 12% of people trust political parties, and there is a corrosive view that politicians are all in it for themselves. The issue has become so severe that I argue that the very integrity of our political system is under serious threat. Our constituents will not cast their votes if they do not believe that their vote makes a difference. Without voting, of course, they lose their stake in our politics. Who can blame them? For far too long, successive Governments have failed to act on political finance reform, leaving our system vulnerable to exploitation by those who seek to subvert our much-cherished democracy.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting the Electoral Commission, which has warned that significant loopholes in our political finance laws allow money of unknown origin, and potentially foreign influence, to infiltrate British politics. Independent scrutiny bodies, including the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament and the Committee on Standards in Public Life, have repeatedly warned about the risks posed by opaque political donations. That is why we desperately need what I hope will be a forthcoming elections Bill. I urge the Minister, in her response, to provide a clear timeline for that piece of legislation. We desperately need to close loopholes, empower regulators and protect our democratic institutions from foreign influence.

[Jim Shannon]

Continuing that line of thought, Northern Ireland will need to be part of such a new legislative ruling. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we must all be subject to the same rules in this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

[Phil Brickell]

I agree that we need to move across the entirety of the United Kingdom to clean up our politics. Time waits for no person, so we must act now. With that in mind, I would like to propose five key reforms, which I gently ask the Minister to consider.

First, and most importantly, the campaigning organisation Spotlight on Corruption has called for “know your donor” checks, which would legally require political parties to conduct thorough checks on the source of donations. If a donor’s origins cannot be verified, that donation should be rejected outright. As a former compliance professional for more than a decade myself, I know that such checks can be proportionate and risk based, avoiding excessive administrative burdens. This approach would align with anti-money laundering practices already established in the private sector and mirror existing requirements in the charity sector. If charities must conduct due diligence on their donors, why should political parties be exempt?

Secondly, has the Minister considered reducing the donation reporting thresholds to bring more donations into light? Coupled with the “know your donor” checks, I think that would improve scrutiny and put off lower-value donations from dubious sources.

Thirdly, there is a glaring loophole around shell companies. Under current rules, companies that have never turned a profit in the UK can still donate to political parties. That is an obvious weakness for potential foreign influence, and I am yet to hear a convincing argument as to why it is permitted. The solution is simple: the Government should mandate that a UK-registered company can only donate from the UK profits that it makes. That seems like a principle we can all get behind, and it would go a long way to protecting our much-cherished democracy.

Fourthly, as we have already heard, we must address the role of unincorporated associations, which provide a potential trapdoor for dark money entering our politics. Currently, candidates are not required to verify the ultimate source of donations received through these associations, effectively creating opaque slush funds. Forcing unincorporated associations to conduct better checks on the sources of the original donations would very quickly put an end to that risk.

Fifthly, despite the current political financing laws being riddled with loopholes, they are not even enforced properly. The Tories neutered the Electoral Commission and stripped it of its independence in the Elections Act 2022. What better way to return politics to service than by equipping the commission to hold all parties, including my own, to account? We could start by increasing its capacity for deterrence, by putting up its fining powers. In this era of plutocrat donors, the current paltry fines that the Electoral Commission can impose are hardly going to put wrongdoers off. As I understand it, enhancements to the regime in that respect would not even require primary legislation.

This is an existential issue for our politics. It is not about one person, one party, one donor or even one jurisdiction. Transparency International UK has found that between 2001 and 2024, nearly £115 million in political donations came from unknown or questionable sources, with £1 in every £10 donated to political parties having an unclear origin. Reflect on that for a moment. It is simply unacceptable. The early signs are positive, and I thank the Minister for her engagement with myself and colleagues on this matter already. It demonstrates that the Government understand why today’s debate is crucial. Failing to act sends a dangerous message that British democracy is for sale; we cannot and must not allow that to happen.

Political Finance Rules

Phil Brickell Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)]

As colleagues have done already, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton) on securing this debate.

I rise to speak as someone who dedicated almost 15 years of my working life before coming to this place to being an anti-corruption professional. It is an issue that goes to the heart of our politics, so it is somewhat disappointing to see that no Back-Bench Members from the official Opposition are present to speak in this debate. This is a vital issue on which we need to build consensus across party lines.

We have heard about low turnout at elections, which, as I think we all know, tears at the very fabric of our society, corroding democracy and the social contract between the citizen and the state. Foreign political donations might well be banned in the UK, but the current restrictions are far too easy for determined actors to circumvent. In response, we must be bold in reforming our outdated oversight of political donations.

The risk posed by foreign interference plagues all our parties. Although it is not just about one person, individual or party, I have taken the liberty of raking back through donations of years past to illustrate my argument. Indeed, just before the election, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism made what should have been impermissible donations to all six major parties. All but one�Labour�failed to correctly identify that the donation could not be accepted under current rules and return the money.

Elsewhere, the Intelligence and Security Committee�s 2020 report on Russian interference made it clear that Russian money has been used not just to buy up sprawling mansions, but to attempt to buy influence in our politics. We have seen Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of a former Putin Minister, donating more than �2 million to the Conservative party. One might ask, what does �2 million buy? Well, in return, Lubov was awarded with a tennis match with Boris Johnson and dinner with Liz Truss and Theresa May�they picked up the bill, presumably. Let us also take the case of oligarch Alexander Temerko, who ran a Russian state arms company and has coughed up more than �700,000.

Separately, we know that the Russian state and its proxies have a well-documented history of interfering in the politics of other countries and subverting hard-won democracy, whether that is in the United States, France or Moldova, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) mentioned. We should not be so arrogant as to assume that Britain is immune to this interference.

So what can we do? First, I hope that we will see an elections Bill in the next Session, which would provide a golden opportunity to close the loopholes we have heard about today, give the regulator real powers and safeguard our democracy against foreign influence. If the Minister is looking for inspiration, she need only look to organisations such as Spotlight on Corruption, Transparency International UK, as well as the Electoral Commission itself. We should include proposals around making sure that we introduce �Know your Donor rules��or KYD. Introducing such rules would require parties themselves to conduct proper checks on the sources of a donation. Where that cannot be established, the parties themselves will be required to reject that money.

Secondly, we should close the current loophole in our donation system that allows donations from shell companies that have never even turned a profit in the UK. Thirdly, we must crack down on unincorporated associations, such as the Carlton Club, which can channel donations to political candidates. Some unincorporated associations have become opaque slush funds to channel money into politics, allowing money from undisclosed foreign sources to trickle into our election campaigns.

If we fail to act and send a clear message, we undermine democracy and trust in our politics. We must not allow that to happen, and I urge the Minister to be bold.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

Oral Answers to Questions

Phil Brickell Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

We want to see far greater use of rural exception sites in particular, and I am more than happy to sit down with the hon. Gentleman—I think we have already planned to do so—to discuss short-term lets as well as this issue.

[Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)]

T7. I have recently received a number of complaints from my constituents about leasehold managing agents. These include unacceptably long delays for repairs—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. It is totally unfair when a Member is speaking to block the vision of the Chair.

[Phil Brickell]

These include unacceptably long delays for repairs and exorbitant costs at Greenmount Court in Smithills, despite spiralling fees, poor transparency and little to no communication from the agent. What steps is the Minister taking to deliver a fairer deal for existing leaseholders and to hold poorly performing managing agents to account?

[Matthew Pennycook]

We need to balance speed with care, because we will not make the mistake that the previous Government did and pass flawed legislation that requires us to fix it, therefore delaying reform for leaseholders. We will, as soon as possible, introduce the provisions of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024, which will allow us, as I said, to bring in transparency around service charges to allow leaseholders to better challenge unreasonable increases, and we intend to strengthen the regulation of managing agents.

Oral Answers to Questions

Phil Brickell Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)]

T5.  Transparency International recently reported that since 2010, £38.6 million of donations into UK politics have come from unincorporated associations, which are not required to report their source of income. With that in mind, will the Minister close political donation loopholes to protect our democracy from foreign influence by banning unincorporated associations and shell companies that have never turned a profit from donating to political parties?

[Rushanara Ali]

Effective regulation of political finance is crucial for maintaining trust in our electoral system and our democracy. The UK already has a strong framework that makes clear that only those with a legitimate interest in UK elections can make political donations, but the Government committed in our manifesto to strengthening the rules on donations to political parties in order to protect our democracy from foreign interference. We will bring forward proposals in due course.