Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if her Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing a searchable public database of political adverts to improve transparency for political (a) advertising, (b) donations and (c) spending.

Under UK law, those promoting eligible digital campaigning material targeted at the UK electorate are required to include an imprint with their name and address, supporting the transparency of political material online.

Political parties, candidates and third party campaigners are subject to campaign spending limits at UK elections. For transparency, they are already required to report on their spending and donations and provide invoices for payments over a certain amount, including money spent on advertising. Following an election, the Electoral Commission publishes details of campaign spending and donations on their website, and details of candidate spending are available from the relevant local authority.

We have no plans at this time to introduce a requirement for a public database of political adverts but welcome the steps taken by social media companies to create “advert libraries”. We will continue to keep political advertising transparency rules under review.

The Government are committed to strengthening our democracy and upholding the integrity of elections and, as stated in our manifesto, we intend to strengthen the rules around donations to political parties to protect our democracy.