LONDON — Britain’s most powerful union leader has warned Prime Minister Andy Burnham against capping individual donations to political parties in the U.K. Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, told POLITICO he believes a cap could be a “step backwards” as any new law would likely capture donations from trade unions, not just those from individual tycoons and firms based in Britain. It presents a test for Burnham, who rode a wave of union support to replace Keir Starmer as prime minister in July, but has staked his reputation on fixing a broken Westminster system.
The prime minister said last week that his government needs to “go further” to reform donation rules after large gifts declared by rival political parties have worried many on the British left. Nigel Farage’s populist right-wing party Reform UK received £9 million from the cryptocurrency investor Christopher Harborne last year, the largest single political donation from a living person in U.K. history. Burnham declined MPs’ calls to use the government’s Representation of the People Bill as a vehicle for immediate change, as POLITICO revealed in August, but said the existing Defending Democracy Taskforce in the Cabinet Office will consider future changes.
Nowak said: “I do worry about the impact of individuals making really big individual donations to party politics, but it’s very hard to think about — certainly at this stage — how you would design a system that didn’t cut across trade union donations. You’re talking about very small contributions made by members who democratically decide how much they pay, what it’s for, whether they affiliate to the Labour Party or not, and I wouldn’t want to see the voices of those workers excluded from politics because we designed the law badly. However, the body represents all 11 of the “affiliated” unions that pay part of their members’ subscriptions into the Labour Party, several of which are concerned about the prospect of a cap.
Some unions also make large individual donations to Labour, which was born out of the union movement in the early 1900s. The TUC wants to ban donations by overseas residents and people who do not pay U.K. tax. However, the issue of individual donations by U.K.-based entities is more politically fraught.
The government declined to back an amendment put forward by Labour MP Stella Creasy to the Representation of the People Bill last week, which would have introduced a cap of £100,000 per year on individual U.K.-based donors — with a carve-out for trade union political funds. Creasy said the latest version of her amendment would have “completely exempt[ed] trade unions” from the cap. Creasy said that a cross-party group of peers is already working on proposing similar amendments to the bill when it is scrutinized in the House of Lords in the coming months.
She added: “Without a cap, it’s clear the amounts of money flooding into our democracy could drown out everyone else’s voices — including the trade unions.” Nowak made his comments as part of a wide-ranging interview ahead of the TUC’s four-day annual meeting in Brighton, where the union body will campaign for a tax rise on banks to fund a permanent “social tariff” lowering energy bills for low and middle earners. He wrote to ministers this week calling for a “comprehensive plan” to ensure workers have a say on AI practices at their own workplaces. He said: “I think at some stage it will require primary legislation.” Nowak met Burnham face-to-face on Monday and said they discussed his promises to “reindustrialize” Britain and bring more public sector contracts in-house, as well as the TUC’s push for the government to deliver the Employment Rights Act — Labour’s flagship set of workplace reforms — “in full.” Some unions will use next week’s Congress, where either Burnham or a senior Cabinet ally is expected to speak, to press the government for a second employment rights bill to go further than the first Act.
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