Reform's £72m donations 'entirely in line with law', Jenrick says

Robert Jenrick has said Reform UK believed that £72m in donations it has received from two cryptocurrency billionaires were "entirely in line with the law".

The party's economic spokesman told the BBC that he did not expect that it will have to return any of the money from Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne, who are both British and have spent time living overseas.

The government is seeking to change the law on donations to UK political parties from British expats, including a £100,000 cap backdated to 25 March.

"These two donations are entirely in line with the law as it is and, as far as we know, the law as it's going to be in the future," Jenrick said.

Jenrick also told the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg: "It might be that [Housing Secretary] Angela Rayner or the government keep trying to change the law to make it even harder for people to donate to Reform, nothing would surprise me.

"But, as it stands, we believe these are entirely in line with the law."

BBC News has been told that both Delo and Harborne have returned to the UK. Delo is understood to have been back in the country since last year.

Jenrick said Delo had returned to the UK "in part so that he can comply with the changes to the law".

As well as limiting how much British citizens can donate to political parties from overseas, the government has proposed limiting how much those who move back to the UK can give to £100,000 in the remainder of the calendar year and the following calendar year after they return.

The measures were added to the Representation of the People Bill after they were approved by MPs this month. The bill still needs to be scrutinised in the House of Lords.

Rayner, who also appeared on the programme, said the changes proposed by the government were "directly as a result" of a review by former top civil servant Philip Rycroft, published on 25 March.

Rayner said: "We said that because of the intention of the legislation and the recommendations, which we accepted, was known in the public domain that it would be retrospective to that date.

"That legislation is going through Parliament at the moment and we've also written to the Electoral Commission, which is an independent body, to see what further measures we need to take to protect our democracy."

There are currently no restrictions on the amount of money UK-based donors can give to political parties.

The government has previously said it was "determined to tackle" the issue of "mega-donors", and has established a new taskforce to do this.

It did not support calls from some MPs for a cap but Rayner left the door open to the possibility of further restrictions.

"It's not as simple as we're saying we won't put a cap [on donations], it's a question of making sure that the task and finish group look at how we implement this."

Rayner said the aim would be to "protect our democracy in the spirit of individuals not being able to overpower and buy their way into democracy at the expense of those people that are at the ballot box".

She would not be drawn on whether the proposed changes would apply to Delo and Harborne, saying: "I don't know the individual circumstances of those donors."

Jenrick said Delo and Harborne - who each gave £36m to the party in two days and now share the record for the largest ever donation given to a UK political party - were "not buying anything, they simply support our agenda".

Both men had already donated millions of pounds to Reform ahead of the announcement of their latest contributions.

The Times reported in June that Harborne, who has been based in Thailand, had registered to vote in the UK, while Delo had told the Telegraph in April that he was moving back from Hong Kong.

Harborne wrote in the Telegraphon Saturday that Reform was a "start-up party" that lacked "the benefit of hundreds of years of patronage". Delo had written in the newspaper the day prior that he wanted to enable Reform to put up a "fair fight at the next election.

Delo was pardoned by US President Donald Trump last year over a breach of anti-money laundering laws at his crypto trading platform, BitMex, to which he had pleaded guilty in 2022.

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