In 2026, Wales became the first country in the world where politicians can lose their jobs for lying to the public.
A law that passed the Welsh Parliament, known as the Senedd, in March 2026 tasked ministers with creating a criminal offense for making “false or misleading statements of fact” before or during an election “for the purpose of affecting the return of any candidate.” The same law also introduced a recall system where voters could strip a Senedd member of their seat if they were convicted of a crime. When fully enacted, the law would make it possible for a politician to lose their seat if they were found guilty of the yet-to-be established criminal offense of lying before or during an election to hurt another candidate’s chances and recalled by voters.
The law applies only before and during elections, meaning it would make it illegal for Senedd members to lie only at certain times.
At the time of this writing, Senedd lawmakers had not yet created the criminal offense for lying that the law required.
In October, a claim (archived) circulated that Wales had become the first country in the world where politicians can lose their jobs for lying to the public.
One Facebook page that shared the claim wrote:
The Senedd has strengthened its standards, requiring members to avoid deliberately misleading statements and correct factual inaccuracies. Wales is also moving forward with measures targeting election candidates who knowingly make false claims. However, serious misconduct would not automatically lead to removal from office. Instead, it would go through a formal recall process, with voters ultimately deciding whether the politician should lose their seat.
Similar claims also circulated on Instagram and LinkedIn (archived, archived).
The claim was a mixture of true, false and undetermined elements. It was true that members of the Welsh Parliament, called the Senedd, passed a law in March that would eventually allow voters to strip Senedd members of their seats through a recall poll if a member was found guilty of lying to hurt another candidate’s chances “before or during” an election.
However, at the time of this writing, lawmakers had not yet created the criminal offense for lying that the legislation required in order to cause a recall poll. The timeline for the creation of this criminal offense was unclear.
Therefore, while it was true that lawmakers in Wales had voted to make it illegal for politicians to lie under some circumstances, it had not yet become a country where a politician could actually lose their job for lying to the electorate.
What legislation says
The Senedd Cymru (Member Accountability and Elections) Act 2026 introduced two mechanisms that would, in time, allow voters to remove lying elected politicians from office.
Part 1 of the act established a recall poll, meaning a vote on whether a member of the Senedd should be kept or removed from office. According to the act, there were two events that could trigger a recall poll: if a member of the Senedd was “convicted in the United Kingdom of an offense for which the member is sentenced or ordered to be imprisoned or detained,” or if the Senedd Standards of Conduct Committee, which handles complaints about sitting members of the Senedd, recommended it.
The Senedd Standards of Conduct Committee would base its recall poll recommendations on guidelines to be written after the act passed.
The recall poll would be held among voters in the Senedd member’s constituency and would ask voters to decide whether they wanted to remove or retain a member.
Part 3 of the act asked members of the Senedd to create a criminal offense “prohibiting the making or publishing of false or misleading statements of fact before or during an election for the purpose of affecting the return of any candidate.”
The offense would essentially make it illegal for members of the Senedd to tell a lie that hurt another person’s chance to be elected.
According to the act, such a criminal offense should define “what is or is not a statement of fact” and whether the offense applied to “false statements only or both false and misleading statements.” Senedd members must also outline the timing and scope of the new criminal offense as well as to whom it applies in later legislation.
Ultimately, once lawmakers establish recall poll guidelines and the criminal offense of lying, members of the Senedd could be charged and found guilty of that offense. Being found guilty would trigger a recall poll that would allow voters in their constituency to decide whether they could keep their seat.
The act applies only to sitting members of the Senedd. Therefore, it could not remove politicians who were not already elected officials from their seat, such as a candidate running for office for the first time.
The BBC reported when the act passed in March that it would not come into effect until 2030 at the earliest. There appeared to be no set timeline for Senedd members to create the criminal offense required by the act’s Part 3.
Critics fear criminalizing lies will cool debate
Senedd committees scrutinizing the act before it passed raised concerns about its wide-ranging powers given that it relied heavily on future legislation.
For example, in December, the Senedd Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee that scrutinized the act wrote (Page 52):
The Welsh Government has been unable to assess the justice or human rights impact of this potential provision as it does not yet know what the scope or effect of any offence would be. As we have already highlighted in our consideration of section 11, this breaches fundamental and long-standing constitutional principles that new criminal offences should not be set out in secondary legislation. This is particularly relevant as little is set out about the scope of any offence on the face of the Bill.
Also in December, the Member Accountability Bill Committee, which scrutinized Stage 2 of the act, wrote that it was concerned that the act asked the Senedd to (Page 9) “give its endorsement to the creation of a new serious criminal offence which is undefined and could have ‘life-defining’ repercussions, limiting speech during an election without careful consideration.”
Legal experts shared concerns about the “undefined” nature of the legislation the act asked lawmakers to create.
For example, Stephen Clear, a lecturer in constitutional and administrative law and public procurement at Bangor University, wrote in January:
Political debate often involves thinking on one’s feet, interpreting incomplete information, or presenting one side of a complex argument. These are not the same as deliberate lies. But critics argue that, without precision, the law could struggle to distinguish between intentional deception and legitimate disagreement.
He continued:
If politicians fear that honest mistakes, forceful opinions presented as fact or strategic campaign arguments could later be judged criminally false, debate itself may be cooled. This may weaken democracy rather than strengthening it.
Clear noted that it is already illegal in the U.K. to “make or publish a false statement of fact about the personal character or conduct of a candidate in order to affect the return of a candidate at an election.”
False statements that are not about a candidate’s personal character or conduct can also be considered libel or slander. The Nolan Principles, which all public office-holders in the U.K. must adhere to, include “integrity” and “honesty.”
At the time of this writing, the Senedd Standards of Conduct Committee remained in the process of developing guidelines for when the committee should recommend a recall poll. Welsh lawmakers had not yet produced legislation to create a criminal offense for lying to affect the return of a candidate before or during an election.
For further reading, Snopes frequently investigates claims related to elections.
