Ministers already think that the new laws on political donations, as set out in the version of the representation of the people bill which left the Commons earlier this month, will be enough to block some or all of the donations worth £72m to Reform UK announced at the weekend. But they are still planning further amendments to the legislation, when peers debate their own amendments to the bill, to make the restrictions even tighter. Pippa Crerar, Jessica Elgot and Kiran Stacey have the details here in our overnight splash.
Kiran and Henry Dyer also have written a good explainer about the rules. Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has hit back. In an article for the Daily Telegraph, he claims that the proposed new laws – which are retrospective in the sense that they will apply from March 2026, when ministers first announced their intention to legislate, not from the moment when the bill gets royal assent, later this year or early next year – are unfair.
If the crackdown goes ahead, Reform UK will stop Labour getting money from the trade unions if it wins the next election, he says. The Unite union alone has given the Labour party over £50m over the course of the last few years. They’ve got the Employment Rights Act, not to mention big pay rises for bus drivers.
If anybody is giving money to do political bidding, it’s the trade unions. So I would just warn the Labour party here and now: If you try and ban our donors, we in government would certainly ban funding from the trade unions. I don’t want to go down that route.
But it’s something we would be prepared to do. Once again, let me be clear. Neither Ben Delo nor Christopher Harborne will be getting membership of the House of Lords.
They won’t be getting favours, they won’t be influencing policy. Because unlike the uniparty we are not for sale. Until recently the trade unions were opposed to caps on the amount individuals can donate to political parties because they feared that would lead to a rightwing government limiting what unions can donate to Labour.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
