Who is responsible for individual candidate spending and donations?
The election agent has the main responsibility for complying with the laws on candidate spending and donations. The laws cover how much you can spend, who you can accept donations from, and what must be reported after the election.
You can appoint someone as your election agent or be your own agent.1
A deputy election agent, known as a sub-agent, can also be appointed to support the agent.2
After the election, both the candidate and the agent, if you have appointed one, must sign declarations to say that their spending and donation return is complete and correct to the best of their knowledge and belief.
This means that you as the candidate also need to be fully aware of the law.
Spending
The law applies to spending on activities to promote your candidacy, or to criticise other candidates, during a particular period in the run-up to the election. This period is called the ‘regulated period’.
Candidate spending includes any spending incurred, whether on goods, services, property or facilities, for the purposes of the candidate’s election during the regulated period.
By ‘incur’ we mean make a legal commitment to spend money, such as confirming an order.
This includes:
items or services bought before the regulated period begins, but used during it
the value items or services given to you free of charge or at a non-commercial discount of more than 10% - known as ‘notional spending’
There are rules covering:
who can authorise spending and pay for items and services
how much you can spend
which activities count towards your spending limit
deadlines for receiving and paying invoices
what records you must keep
how and when you report your spending
Candidate spending is often known as ‘expenses’. Sometimes, people think this means that spending can be reclaimed from the Senedd, or from us, the Electoral Commission. This is not the case. You are not entitled to recover any spending from public funds.
Individual candidates can only accept donations of money, items or services towards their campaign spending from certain mainly UK-based sources and must report them to the Returning Officer after the election.
If an election agent is appointed, donations must be passed to them as quickly as possible. The agent must then check whether the donation can be accepted.
If no agent has been appointed, the candidate is responsible for handling and checking donations.