Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Liberal Democrat member of The House of Lords and international relations academic.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Pack have re-tabled an amendment for a Royal Commission on donation caps, one of 73 awaiting a Lords committee stage on the Representation of the People Bill that had no date by 5 October 2026.
Last refreshed: 7 October 2026
Timeline for Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Re-tabled a Royal Commission on donation caps
UK Local Elections 2026: Mentioned in: Peers table four caps on party donorsBackground
Lord Wallace of Saltaire is a Liberal Democrat member of The House of Lords. As William Wallace he became a life peer in December 1995, taking the title Baron Wallace of Saltaire, and he is emeritus professor of international relations at the London School of Economics.
During the 2010 to 2015 Coalition he was a government whip and a Lords spokesperson. He later spoke for the party on the Cabinet Office in the Lords, from 2017 until May 2026.
That academic and frontbench record makes him one of the Liberal Democrats' longest-serving voices on constitutional questions, including how parties are funded.
Wallace revives a Royal Commission plan
The Commons had already voted down a Royal Commission on capping party donations. Wallace and his fellow Liberal Democrat peer Lord Pack put the idea back on the order paper for committee stage, preferring an inquiry to writing a figure into the statute.
That sets their amendment apart from the four that name a CAP outright, the lowest being Lord Cromwell's £100,000 over five years and the highest Lord Carlile's £5m annually. Peers gave the bill its Second Reading on 14 September 2026, but by 5 October some 73 amendments were waiting and no committee date had been fixed, so the Royal Commission proposal sits in a long queue.