Labour has criticised an attempt by the government to allow the Democratic Unionist party to conceal details of past political donations, including during the EU referendum, despite a 2014 law that extended party transparency rules to Northern Ireland.

The government has announced it will bring into force new transparency rules for Northern Ireland’s political parties to allow the Electoral Commission to publish details of donations over £7,500.



The provision for the new rules, which will bring Northern Ireland in line with the rest of the UK, was first introduced in legislation in 2014, with the wide understanding it would be applied from that year.

However, the Northern Ireland secretary, James Brokenshire, said he intended the act to be applied from 1 July 2017, which would mean donations during the EU referendum in 2016 would not be made public.

Campaigners have raised questions over the DUP’s spending on the EU referendum in June 2016 – including a £435,000 donation from a group called the Constitutional Research Council (CRC), chaired by Richard Cook, a former vice-chairman of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party.

The source of the cash was revealed by the DUP after a series of articles published by OpenDemocracy, though details of the CRC’s source of income are still opaque.

The DUP spent more than £280,000 of that money on a wraparound advertisement in the London-based Metro newspaper, which is not distributed in Northern Ireland. The party argued the referendum was “UK-wide”.

Political donations have traditionally remained secret in Northern Ireland because of the potential risks to the security of donors whose names might be made public. However, it was agreed it was safe to make them public in the passage of the Northern Ireland Act 2014, which proposed transparency of donations made in Northern Ireland after 1 January 2014.

The government has said it intends to enact the transparency rules in the legislation via statutory instrument, which allow the provisions of an act of parliament to come into force or be altered without parliament having to debate them.

The statutory instrument was examined by the delegated legislation committee of MPs on Tuesday, where the junior Northern Ireland minister, Chloe Smith, argued that applying the new rules only from July was the right thing to do. This prompted criticism from some Labour MPs on the committee, among them Ben Bradshaw, who called her speech “Orwellian”.

The government’s plan was backed by Conservative MPs on the committee, and passed by nine votes to eight.

The shadow Northern Ireland secretary, Owen Smith, one of the Labour MPs on the committee, condemned the vote, and said the party planned to raise the issue in the Commons on Wednesday.

“The Tories could not explain what the rationale was for setting the July date,” he said. “It stinks to high heaven that the Tories are offering no explanation other than offering a deal for their mates in the DUP, who cannot say where the money came from and why they did not spend it in Northern Ireland.

“Why are the Tories covering this up? They are actively going against what they proposed in their own legislation in 2014.”

Brokenshire’s department said it did “not believe it is right or fair to impose retrospective regulations or conditions on people who donated in good faith in accordance with the rules as set out in law at the time”.

Séamus Magee, the former head of the Electoral Commission in Northern Ireland, has suggested the decision not to backdate the rule may be part of the DUP’s “confidence and supply” deal with the Conservatives to prop up the minority government.

“The deal on party donations and loans must be part of the DUP-Conservative deal. No other explanation,” he tweeted. “Every party in Northern Ireland understood that the publication of political donations over £7,500 was to be retrospective to January 2014.”