Electoral Commission

Established under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, the Electoral Commission is the UK's independent regulator for election administration and party finance across Great Britain. It registers parties, monitors campaign spending, enforces donation rules and manages electoral registers, answering to the Speaker's Committee in Parliament and jointly regulated alongside Ofcom. Its powers are civil rather than criminal: it can impose sanctions and refer cases to police, but cannot compel information from entities outside the UK.

That jurisdictional limit has been exposed through 2026 by Reform UK's crypto donations. The Commission confirmed in April it cannot verify the party's transactions processed through Radom Pay, a Polish payment firm outside FCA jurisdiction , and the Representation of the People Bill's donation moratorium missed the pre-election wash-up on 25 April. A government amendment on 14 July clarified the moratorium is intended to apply retrospectively to 25 March 2026, though it still has not become law .

The Commission is one of three bodies examining Reform UK's donor relationships in parallel, alongside the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards' inquiry into Christopher Harborne's undeclared £5 million gift to Nigel Farage and the FCA's review of Farage's role at Stack BTC. Labour separately asked the Commission on 5 July whether aide George Cottrell's funding of Farage's pre-2024 security and staffing should have been declared . None of the parallel inquiries has concluded, leaving the regulatory gap the Commission itself flagged still unresolved months after polling day.