Asked by: Jim McMahon (Labour (Co-op) - Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if she will take legislative steps to require the promotion of party political content on social media platforms during the regulated period as third party campaign activity that has to be (a) valued and (b) declared in election expense returns.
Answered by Samantha Dixon - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
Under existing legislation, spending above £20,000 in England or £10,000 in Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland on promoting party political content during the regulated period, whether on social media or other platforms, must be treated as campaign expenditure. This means it must be valued and reported in the relevant spending return to the Electoral Commission.
Both political parties and third-party campaigners are required to account for the costs of paid promotion, such as advertising on digital platforms, in their returns. These costs contribute to overall spending limits and transparency requirements designed to ensure fairness and accountability in elections.
The Government will continue to keep electoral law under review and work closely with the Electoral Commission to ensure that the framework remains effective and proportionate in the context of evolving campaign practices, including digital campaigning.
Asked by: Lord Rennard (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of reporting by The Sunday Times on 26 January regarding the robustness and transparency of police investigations into allegations of illegal election campaign activities, and in particular, of investigations into election materials produced in the Leicester South constituency in the 2024 general election.
Answered by Baroness Taylor of Stevenage - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
Any individual or organisation wishing to influence the electorate should be prepared to be transparent about their activity. Campaigners are required to include an imprint with their name and address on a wide range of printed and digital election campaigning material in scope of the rules.
It is an offence to distribute printed or digital election campaign material without a correct imprint. There are also strict local campaign spending rules for political parties, candidates and third-party campaigners.
Any offences are a matter for the Electoral Commission or the police to enforce depending on the facts of the case. Police forces and the Electoral Commission are operationally independent of government.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
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.
Answered by Rushanara Ali
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.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that UK elections are not affected by political interference by (a) China and (b) other countries.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
It is, and always will be, an absolute priority for this government to protect our democratic and electoral processes against foreign interference.
Last year, the Prime Minister established the Defending Democracy Taskforce to protect the democratic integrity of the UK from threats of foreign influence. Its mission is to reduce the risk to the UK’s democratic processes, institutions and society, and ensure that these are secure and resilient to threats of foreign interference.
In addition, the National Security Act 2023 creates a new offence of foreign interference. This will make it an offence to illegitimately influence the UK’s democratic processes and elected officials on behalf of a foreign power. The offence will also significantly increase sentences for electoral offences if they are carried out on behalf of a foreign power. Related measures in the Online Safety Bill will require digital platforms to proactively take action against a wide range of state-sponsored disinformation and state-linked online interference, including digitally manipulated content, where this has the aim of interfering with UK elections.
The Elections Act 2022 strengthened three important components of the political finance framework: fairness, transparency and controls against foreign spending. Since its introduction, the Government has restricted foreign campaign spending at elections and introduced a new requirement on political parties to declare their assets and liabilities over £500 upon registration. Foreign donations (and channelling foreign money) are already illegal. The Act also ensures greater transparency on digital campaigning, through the introduction of digital imprints.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to protect upcoming UK elections from being influenced by AI-driven content.
Answered by Baroness Scott of Bybrook - Shadow Minister (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
It is, and will always be, an absolute priority to protect our democratic and electoral processes. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology's Counter Disinformation Unit responds to periods of acute disinformation risk, including UK elections. The Unit does this by identifying harmful false narratives and working closely with the major social media platforms to encourage them to swiftly remove disinformation and coordinated inauthentic or manipulated behaviour, as per their Terms of Service.
The Elections Act 2022 introduced one of the most comprehensive 'digital imprint' regimes that operates in the word today. This new regime, once commenced, will increase the transparency of digital political campaigning; empowering citizens to make informed decisions on who is promoting political material online and on whose behalf.
Asked by: Andrew Bowie (Conservative - West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what recent assessment he has made of the safety and security of independent council candidates in the context of the requirement to provide a visible address on election literature in local authority elections.
Answered by Kemi Badenoch - Leader of HM Official Opposition
Imprints are required on any printed election material, including that of independent candidates at local elections, to provide voters with the level of transparency they rightly expect about who is campaigning. The imprint requirement also supports the rules on campaign spending limits. The requirement to include an address as part of the imprint is important to enable the police and the courts to enforce the rules relating to candidate election material with legal certainty.
The safety of election campaigners and candidates is our utmost priority. For this reason, while candidates must use a postal address where they can be contacted, a range of addresses are permitted under the imprint rules. Therefore, candidates have alternative options if they feel uncomfortable publishing their home address on printed election material. As outlined in Electoral Commission guidance, this can be an office or business address. Candidates may also use a PO Box address or other mailbox service.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of introducing measures which extend the imprint rules to digital communications in order for digital campaign material to have an imprint saying who is behind the campaign and who created it.
Answered by Kemi Badenoch - Leader of HM Official Opposition
Voters value transparency and that is why the Elections Bill introduces a digital imprints regime so that when voters engage with politics online they are clear who is promoting the campaign material and on whose behalf.
Reflecting positive feedback to the technical consultation Transparency in digital campaigning launched by the Cabinet Office last year, the digital imprints regime proposed as part of the Elections Bill will go much further than the current imprint rules for printed material, further increasing transparency and empowering voters to make informed decisions about the digital campaign material they are viewing online.
A digital imprint must include the name and address of the promoter of the material and the name and address of any person or organisation on behalf of whom the material is being promoted. Breaching the digital imprint rules will be an offence and the Electoral Commission and police will have shared responsibility for the enforcement of the regime.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of the potential effect of the proposed removal of prosecutorial powers from the Electoral Commission on the (a) accountability of the executive, (b) integrity of elections and (c) transparency of political party funding.
Answered by Chloe Smith
The Electoral Commission does not currently, and has never in over 20 years, brought criminal prosecutions. The Government intends to maintain the status quo by providing clarity in law that the Commission should not bring criminal prosecutions in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The proper place for criminal investigations and prosecutions relating to electoral law is with the police and the Crown Prosecution Service (and the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland) who are experts in this domain. Having the Commission step into this space would risk wasting public money. The Electoral Commission will continue to have a wide range of investigatory and civil sanctioning powers available to it and, as is currently the case, is able to refer more serious matters to the police.
The Government is committed to protecting our democracy and ensuring that it remains secure, modern, transparent and fair. The Elections Bill will further strengthen the integrity of UK elections by updating electoral law, including the rules on the transparency of digital campaigning and political finance, the introduction of voter identification and measures improving the integrity of postal and proxy voting.
Asked by: Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to respond to the findings of the Electoral Reform Society's report, Democracy in the Dark: Digital Campaigning in the 2019 General Election and Beyond, published on 24 September, and in particular, the finding that online campaigning spend and non-party campaigning activity increased significantly, although in an undocumented manner, during the 2019 general election campaign.
Answered by Lord True - Shadow Leader of the House of Lords
The Government is taking forward a programme of work that will strengthen and update the UK’s electoral regulation to ensure it is fit for the modern age; provides a robust framework for campaign finance; and supports public confidence in our processes.
Political parties, registered third parties and candidates are already required to report expenses that qualify as electoral expenditure and this includes digital campaigning. We have launched a consultation on digital imprints which will require political parties, campaigners and others to clearly show who they are when promoting campaign content online.
Across all of this work the intention is to improve transparency to ensure voters can make informed choices, and to enforce spending rules.
Asked by: Owen Thompson (Scottish National Party - Midlothian)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made for the implications of his policies of the Electoral Reform Society’s Democracy in the Dark: Digital Campaigning in the 2019 General Election and Beyond report.
Answered by Chloe Smith
The Government is committed to upholding and protecting the integrity of elections. We are taking forward a programme of work that will strengthen and update the UK’s electoral regulation to ensure it is fit for the modern age; provides a robust framework for campaign finance; and supports public confidence in our processes.
We have already launched a consultation on digital imprints which will require political parties, campaigners and others to clearly show who they are when promoting campaign content online. We continue to work closely with social media companies, and welcome steps they have taken to improve transparency.
Across all of this work the intention is to improve transparency to ensure voters can make informed choices, and to enforce spending rules that ensure an even playing field. Policy or political arguments which can be rebutted by rival campaigners or an independent free press as part of the normal course of political debate are not regulated.The Government does not support creating a regime which would seek to police the accuracy or truthfulness of content.