Representation of the People Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Sojan Joseph and Lisa Smart

Committee stage
Wednesday 18th March 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Lisa Smart]

Q I should declare that I am a member of the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission. You have already answered one of my questions, which was about profit being a better measure than turnover for companies donating, so I will not ask you about that.

The Electoral Commission’s press release in response to the publication of the Bill said—I cannot remember the exact phrasing—that the Bill was welcome but that it did not go quite far enough, and that the commission would like to see more measures to tackle issues with where we are in our democracy. Trust in politics is at a very low level, and trust in our democracy is an important element in our democracy remaining legitimate and in our having the trust and faith of the electorate. What more would you like to see the Bill do to rebuild trust in politics?

Vijay Rangarajan: There are a couple of areas where we would like to see further work. I have already mentioned company donations—that is crucial. To be clear, our polling shows that while trust in politics in general is quite low, trust in the electoral system is very high, as two of your previous witnesses said. That is important.

We would like the “know your donor” provisions to be strengthened. At the moment, to pass them, a political party accepting a donation would need to produce a risk assessment, but it would be good if that had to be public, sent to us or used in such a way that others could judge whether there was a reasonable risk of a party accepting impermissible donations. We know that that is one of the areas the public have least faith in: somewhere between 14% and 17% of the public think the political finance system works for them.

The second area is automatic registration, where it is less about the change in the Bill and more about implementing it before the next general election. Most countries have systems like this, and they work well. We know the data sources quite well. We recently evaluated four pilots in Welsh local authorities, and showed that they were very successful at boosting not only the completeness of the register but, crucially, the accuracy. There is not a tension between completeness and accuracy when you are using good data sources. We can now do that.

Another area to flag is overseas voters, which I think your previous witnesses mentioned. In many cases around the world, we think they have a hard deal in actually being able to vote. We would like to see further work to help them.

Finally, if the Committee does not mind, I will just ride my hobby horse. This will be the 27th Representation of the People Act, and some consolidation and simplification of electoral law is necessary, not least for electoral administrators, parties and candidates. We would very much like to see a broad-ranging, cross-party and Government commitment to do some consolidation over the next few years.

[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.