Performance analysis 2019/20: Goal two

To ensure an increasingly trusted and transparent system of regulation in political finance, overseeing compliance, promoting understanding amongst those regulated and proactively pursuing breaches

This goal captures our regulatory role. This work focuses on two areas at the heart of a healthy democracy: ensuring transparency and good regulation.

Key achievements

To ensure transparency, we:

  • published annual accounts from registered parties, information about donations and loans, and details of campaign spending, which parties and others are required to report to us
  • registered political parties and other campaigners and published details in online registers
  • continued reviewing party descriptions, to ensure that voters can identify the party for which candidates are standing
  • continued developing a new online portal for party registration and finance, which we aim to launch in 2021 and will improve how parties and campaigners register and deliver financial returns
  • scrutinised advertising transparency proposals from social media companies including Facebook, Google, Twitter and Snapchat, to ensure they provided improved transparency about digital campaign activity at elections in 2019

To support good regulation we:

  • provided advice and guidance to support parties, candidates and campaigners to comply with the rules
  • took action and imposed sanctions when the political finance rules were broken
  • defended legal challenges to our enforcement decisions
  • developed new codes of practice for parties and candidates
  • continued pressing for law changes to strengthen our investigatory and sanctioning powers – including increasing the maximum fine we are able to impose for breaches of PPERA from the current level of £20,000
  • worked with the National Assembly for Wales to review their Standing Orders and ensure they have a robust plan to develop new rules and guidance for the elections in 2021 and to bring dual reporting to an end
     

Performance measures

Measures Performance

We publish routine financial returns from parties and campaigners, including statements of accounts, within 30 working days of receiving them (target 100%)

 100% 
Achieved

We check a minimum of 25% of all financial returns for accuracy and compliance each year

 57.7%1
Achieved 

We publish 100% of guidance products on time with no substantive errors

100%
Achieved

We provide accurate advice within five to 20 days of receipt of the request, depending on the complexity of the advice (target 90%)

 94%
Achieved

We notify applicants of the outcome of their registration applications within 30 days of a complete application 75% of the time

 86.2%
Achieved

We conduct timely and proportionate investigations of which 90% are completed within 180 days

 84.3%2
Achieved

We issue 90% of final notices setting out our sanctions within 21 days of the deadline for representations. We publish the outcome of all our investigations

  87.5%3  
Achieved 

We make timely regulatory recommendations that reflect the principles guiding our approach to effective regulatory framework

 100%
Achieved

Ensuring transparency

Throughout the year, we focussed on delivering the responsibilities we are accountable for to the UK’s parliaments. We maintained the registers of political parties, ensuring only parties meeting the legal tests are on the register, and we continued reviewing descriptions to help voters identify the party for which candidates are standing.

We faced two instances of campaigners seeking, via the court, to have their spending returns removed from our online database. One campaigner withdrew their court application and the court refused the other application.

Good regulation

Leading up to the UK Parliamentary general election, we registered a record number of non-party campaigners. We also developed our approach to campaign monitoring to be more proactive and quickly identify and intervene when issues came up. This stopped them from escalating and prevented campaigners from breaking the rules. We will continue to focus on this.

We continued to use our investigation and sanctioning powers to identify and respond to non-compliance and deter future non-compliance. We imposed fines of £25k and £40k respectively, on two registered parties for multiple failures. The courts heard three appeals against penalties in 2019. One was withdrawn, one refused and one upheld. This brings the total number of appeals against sanctions we have imposed to five, of which the courts have upheld one. The appeals have provided helpful case law and we have learned from each case to improve our enforcement approach.

For a number of years we have recommended that the UK’s governments should change laws to strengthen our investigatory and sanctioning powers. This year we saw such changes in Scotland, where the Scottish Parliament, through the Referendums (Scotland) Act, increased the level of fines available to us (from £20,000 to £500,000); gave us wider powers to obtain information outside of formal investigations; and established rules to require imprints on digital campaign material.