The House | The elections bill will only properly deal with big money in politics by capping donations

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At the last US election, Americans watched Elon Musk hand out million-dollar cheques to voters during the campaign. Everyone could see what was happening. Regulators did nothing. Weeks later, he was sitting at the right hand of the President. It was a vivid, public demonstration of what happens when money in politics has no limits: the rules become irrelevant, and by the time anyone acts, the damage is done.

The UK is not the United States. But the direction of travel should worry us. Nearly £100m was spent at the last general election after the previous government dramatically increased already multi-million-pound spending limits. We are building a system where a shrinking pool of very wealthy people bankroll our politics, and where political parties have become dangerously dependent on them. A system where big money donations are apparently traded for access and influence.

The Representation of the People Bill now before Parliament introduces some welcome reforms to our political finance regime. The government is seeking to tackle foreign interference. The tightening of rules on unincorporated associations, the increase in Electoral Commission fining powers, and tighter restrictions on corporate donations are real improvements, and the ministers and officials working on them deserve credit.

But there are gaps at the heart of this bill. Left open, they will leave room for foreign and undue influence to thrive.

Last week I gave evidence to the bill committee, and I put this problem as plainly as I could.

The UK does not prohibit people who cannot vote here from owning companies that trade here. So, someone determined to funnel money into British politics can simply acquire a company to do the job for them. The Electoral Commission has flagged the revenue test for corporate donors as a real foreign interference risk. Tax experts confirm it is fairly straightforward to generate significant UK turnover with no genuine operations in this country. This is not hypothetical: investigations have already traced around £6m in donations to companies ultimately owned by individuals who are not eligible to vote in the UK.

You can keep plugging holes in this system one by one. But if there is no limit on how much any single donor can give, you are trying to secure a building while leaving the front door wide open.

That’s why, along with other civil society organisations, academics and experts, we are calling for MPs to use this bill to introduce a meaningful cap on donations and join democracies such as Canada, France, Italy, and Australia, which is introducing its own cap in July, in taking action against big money in politics.

A cap does not starve parties of funds. It breaks the dependence on a handful of donors who currently account for an outsized share of the total. And let me be clear about what that dependence means. It is not just about the outcome of any one election. It is about the process. With our analysis showing that over two-thirds of all private donations in 2023 came from just 19 mega donors, you no longer have a system that represents the people. A bill called the Representation of the People Bill ought to take that seriously.

Some will argue that stronger enforcement is the answer, but enforcement in this area is too slow to keep pace with our politics. Former MEP and Reform Wales leader Nathan Gill is serving a 10-year prison sentence for bribery offences he admitted to in court. Those offences happened seven years before he was convicted. That is the reality of relying on criminal enforcement to protect our elections. By the time the system catches up, the election is over, and the consequences have already been played out. Parliament’s own report into Russian Interference, commissioned in 2017, was repeatedly delayed, with its publication held back by the government until July 2020. We need measures that prevent foreign and undue influence, not ones that chase it years after the fact.

The government has been clear that it wants to tackle foreign interference and protect democratic integrity. That is to be welcomed. But every safeguard in this bill can be circumvented by someone with enough money and enough determination, so long as there is no ceiling on what they can spend. Two-thirds of the public support donation caps of £50,000 or less. The opportunity is here. The mandate is there. A donation cap is how you prove you mean it.

Duncan Hames is Director of Policy at Transparency International UK and a former Liberal Democrat MP