Representation of the People Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Sojan Joseph and Lewis Cocking

Committee stage
Wednesday 18th March 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Sojan Joseph (Ashford) (Lab)]

Q I want to ask a question about foreign donations. The Bill seeks to ensure that any company making political donations must be able to demonstrate that it has a genuine connection to the UK. Do you believe that that will be sufficient to prevent foreign-linked entities from donating to political parties?

Vijay Rangarajan: We think that it is a very useful change but that it does not go far enough. We see a range of threats—I must admit that this is drawn from our experience of looking at other elections in other countries and working with partner electoral commissions —and that includes online. In the financial space, there is a distinct attempt by people to channel money into other people’s politics. It would be perfectly possible, even with the provisions you mentioned, for people in other countries, or impermissible donors in general, to channel money through a company, even if it had that linkage. That is why some kind of a cap on how much a company can donate, based on profit, coupled with the other tests the Government have in the Bill—for example, on persons of significant control—would be really helpful.

That will not completely eliminate the risk, and we look forward to what Philip Rycroft says about any other measures that may be needed, but we think it will help not only to reassure parties that they are at lower risk of accepting impermissible donations, which is a criminal act, but to reassure voters that the system is being kept under close review.

[Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)]

Q I would like to talk about the 8 million people you reckon are not registered. Some of those people might choose not to register to vote, and the Government’s intention in the Bill is to bring in automatic voter registration. Do you see any issues with that if they are not all automatically registered for the same general election? For example, if four million are automatically registered before the next general election, and four million are not, you could argue that there are two different sets of electors, with one being easier to register and one being harder. Can you comment on that?

Vijay Rangarajan: You are absolutely right. One of the risks we have with automatic voter registration across the UK is a significant divergence of systems. The Welsh Government have already carried out successful pilots and done a lot of work on this. As I understand it, they intend to proceed with automatic voter registration in Wales relatively soon—over the next year or so. The Scottish Government are also beginning to think about it.

Obviously, the provisions are here in the Bill, but there is quite a long timescale for them. It is possible that we will end up with several different systems of automatic voter registration, and that they will act at different times. That would have real problems, and it does not feel to us like a good use of money. It would also be very complex indeed for an electoral registration officer to try to handle different registration systems in one area for different elections. Take, for example, a Welsh officer dealing with automatic voter registration for Welsh elections but not for UK-wide ones. We would welcome some rapid work to establish a UK-wide system of automatic voter registration soon.