Why is the People’s Bill on donation caps getting so little coverage?

[BlouDog]

I’ve been reading about something called the People’s Bill, which would cap political donations so wealthy individuals/companies can’t give huge amounts.
It seems like quite a big deal in terms of fairness, but I’ve barely seen it mentioned anywhere.

Am I missing something, or is this just not being covered?

Would people actually support this kind of change?

I definitely back it and also a ban on foreign donations.

I imagine most non-Reform voters would back it.

Unfortunately it's very easy to bypass as there will still be no cap on UK corporate donations. Reform's big funder has a couple of UK based companies which he would still be able to push funds through.

There’s actually a petition about it if you are interested

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/761345

Theres actually a petition about if you are interested. Found it whilst doing some research on the people's bill...

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/761345

Thanks but £1000 is too low.

If the cap is too high, it defeats the purpose. Surely the whole idea is that no one person should be able to fund politics in a way that gives them outsized influence...

The problem is that political parties need money - I hope we never end up with a system like the US, where it costs millions to get someone elected, but it’s not nothing here. So how are political parties to raise money? Either through donations, which means that wealthy individuals and companies can be seen to have a disproportionate influence over the party to which they’ve contributed, or by public funding - increasing taxes to pay for political parties, so you would be paying for parties with which you fundamentally disagreed. I don’t want political parties to be funded out of tax, so I have to put up with individual, corporate and union donations. I agree, though, that donations from abroad shouldn’t be allowed.
Edited for typo.

I agree but £1000 is nothing.

But isn’t that a bit of a false choice? It’s not just ‘big donations or taxpayer funding’- a cap still allows donations, just without any one person or company having outsized influence. It wouldn’t remove donations, just limit how much influence any one donor can have

I agree with it, I don't think that any party should be influenced by large donors - I think £1000 is probably too low though and it should be more like £10,000.

Morgan Mc Sweeney in his previous role as director of the think tank Labour Together had £740,000 in undeclared donations between 2017 and 2020.

Martin Taylor - hedge fund manager - gave £85,000 between 2015 and '22 and Trevor Chinn, prominent supporter of Labour and Friends of Isreal gave 265,000.

Other venture capitalists who had funded Labour Together it later came out were:
Francesca Perrin & Lord David Sainsbury
Gary Lubner: The car glass repair tycoon (Belron)
Paul Myners: Former Treasury minister and Marks & Spencer chairman.
Clive Hollick: Millionaire Labour peer and media executive.
Simon Tuttle, Sean Wadsworth, and Richard Greer: Various investment bankers and private equity executives.

So whatever you think of Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Left it is undeniable that a small amount of individuals with a large amount of money funded the right wing of Labour that brought Starmer to power.
This subverts the democratic process and in the end it hasn't done Labour any good.

I think your examples are exactly why people are pushing for a cap in the first place. The question is where to set it so influence isn’t concentrated among people who can afford five-figure donations.

£10,000 sounds more reasonable on the surface, but it still puts meaningful influence out of reach for most people.

I would definitely support it and think we need it to become law as a matter of urgency! I presume the reason it isn't getting much coverage is the same reason that Israel's actions in Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon, or the war in Ukraine and Sudan, don't get much coverage. The US/Israel war in the ME and other Trump antics are sucking up all the news. Plus pointless shenanigans by opposition parties in the UK to try to push Starmer out.