New donations and loans guidance for Members of the UK Parliament: Sponsorship

Sponsorship is any money or other property (items, goods or services) provided to you to help, or which must reasonably be assumed to help, meet costs in connection with:

• any conference, meeting or other event (including digital conferences or events)
• the preparation, production, or distribution of a publication (print or digital), or
• any study or research

where these are organised by you or on your behalf.1

Sponsorship may include payments to you on commercial terms. Even if you and the sponsor may view this as a commercial arrangement, sponsorship payments are a type of donation. The same permissibility and reporting requirements apply to donations received as sponsorship as with other donations.

Sponsorship is regulated because it has a similar effect as other types of donations. For both sponsorship and other types of donations, the law provides transparency on financial benefits provided to you.

When does a payment help meet costs?

In most cases, a payment made in connection with an event, publication or research may reasonably be assumed to be to help meet its costs. The intention of the sponsor is irrelevant to whether a payment is sponsorship. If one of the purposes of the payment was to help you meet these costs, or may reasonably be assumed to be to help you meet these costs, this is sponsorship. 

It is important to consider how a reasonable person would see the payment and whether they would think one of the purposes of the payment is to help you meet these costs.

A payment does not have to be used to meet costs directly to count as sponsorship.

Valuing sponsorship

The value of the sponsorship is the full amount of the payment received from the sponsor. You must not make any deductions for any potential benefit to the sponsor or where the actual costs of the event, publication, study or research are less than the amount received from the sponsor.2