Political funding: Stella Creasy bids to close donations loophole

Stella Creasy MP has tabled an amendment to the Representation of the People Bill that would cap political donations at £100,000 – placing a hard limit on the influence billionaires can exert on our elections.

Over the last decade, private donations from companies and individuals giving more than £1m have surged, from 1% of the total in 2015 to more than 33% in 2024.

This increase has played out while businesses linked to individual donors have bagged public contracts worth billions. Frank Hester, founder of the software company TPP, gave the Tories more than £20m between 2023 and 2024. Since 2016, his firm has snapped up government contracts worth more than £591m. And the bonanza has continued under Labour, with companies donating to the party grabbing contracts worth more than £130m in the first year they were in power.

But Nigel Farage has turbocharged the shift towards wealthy backers, with more than 60% of Reform UK’s donations last year coming from one man: the cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne. Harborne has given Reform and the Brexit Party more than £25m since 2019, and handed Farage himself £5m weeks before he announced he was standing in the 2024 general election.

The party has since announced a slew of crypto-friendly policies, proposing tax cuts on crypto investments and for the Bank of England to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve.

Regulations around donations to UK political parties have tightened over recent years. Foreign donations have been banned since 2000, and this March the government blocked donations made in cryptocurrency and set a cap of £100,000 on donations from British citizens living abroad.

The government went further this week, announcing proposals for further restrictions. But they’ve left a yawning gap. Even though 92% of voters support a hard limit on political donations, the government’s Representation of the People Bill puts no limit on the amounts that people based in the UK can give.

Now Creasy has proposed a simple amendment that would cap donations from any individual or company at £100,000 a year – less than 1% of what Harborne gave to Reform UK last year.

Good Law Project has built an online tool to help people tell their MPs to support this vital amendment. But with the vote due in parliament on Tuesday 14 July, there isn’t much time to mobilise support.

Speaking to the Guardian, Creasy explained that her amendment could counter the notion that “any UK politician has a price tag”.

“Capping donations at £100,000 from any single individual in a calendar year would put a stop to the idea any millionaire’s voice matters more than someone else’s,” Creasy said, “and protect those who want to support causes they care about on all sides.”

It’s time to defend democracy and put a cap on political donations, before it’s too late.