Reform UK’s deputy leader has declined to say when two crypto billionaires who gave a combined £72m to the party returned to the UK, as the architect of a review into overseas donations said anyone here for less than 12 months would be subject to a limit on donations.
Richard Tice said that while he was completely confident Reform had complied with all current and proposed laws on donations, he could not say when Ben Delo returned to the UK from Hong Kong, or how much time the Thailand-based Christopher Harborne spent in Britain.
“I’m not their executive assistant responsible for their day-to-day diary,” Tice told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme when asked about the details of their UK residencies.
He added: “Everything we’re doing is in accordance with the existing rules and the rules of the legislation that’s going through parliament as we speak.”
The legislation referred to, the representation of the people bill, does not currently contain any overall cap on individual donations, after lobbying from Labour-backing trade unions.
In response to the mega-donations by Harborne and Delo, trade unions, MPs and donors have urged the government to look again at the bill. But in the wake of a report into overseas influence on UK politics by Sir Philip Rycroft, a former senior civil servant, Britons living overseas will be limited to giving a maximum of £100,000.
The bill, which goes further than some of Rycroft’s recommendations, sets out that the cap applies to anyone who was not UK-resident for electoral purposes for at least a year from March 2026, applying retrospectively once the bill becomes law.
Speaking to Today, Rycroft said that while he could not comment on the circumstances of Delo or Harborne, the residency rules would apply.
“What I do understand is that the way the law will work, it will implement my recommendation on a limit for Brits abroad, as it were. But there will also be rules on, if they return to the UK, how long they have to live in the UK before they can count as domestic donors.
“And my understanding is that they will have to be living in the UK for at least a full calendar year. Once they met that requirement, then they become essentially a domestic donor.”
Rycroft said his reviewed decided a cap on money from overseas-based British donors was important as it was harder to trace the origins of overseas money, and that it was “a question of fairness” in limiting the influence of “people who had chosen to take their wealth abroad and to be taxed abroad”.
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The two separate donations of £36m by Harborne and Delo, announced within 24 hours, are unprecedented in UK political history and will give Reform enormously boosted resources before the next election.
Delo was based in Hong Kong but has returned to the UK. Asked when, Tice said this had happened “many, many months ago”. Harborne is registered to vote in the UK, but also lives in Thailand.
Asked how he could know the donations were permissible under the new rules, Tice said Reform’s compliance department had looked into it. But he condemned the retrospective plans of the bill, telling BBC 1’s Breakfast that it was the action of “a socialist government that wants to retrospectively change the rules and regulations in order to protect themselves from a bit of competition”.
Speaking to Sky News, the schools minister, Georgia Gould, said the way the bill had been drafted was deliberate. Gouuld said: “The rules have been very clear, and the reason why it was applied retrospectively is because the risk is if you didn’t do that, then lots of donations would suddenly start flowing through before the legislation.
“The really important thing is this was an independent report that looked into these really serious issues that many people are concerned about, foreign interference in politics, and we made very clear at the time that it would be retrospective for good reason.”
