UK government may allow DUP donations to remain secret
The government is attempting to allow the DUP to conceal details of political donations, in spite of being bound to the transparency rules that were extended to Northern Ireland in 2014.
Political donations have always been a delicate subject in Northern Ireland because of the safety risks donors had to run in the past when they were made public. Nowadays, that threat no longer exists so these donations can be made public.
The new rules, which were introduced in 2014, were intended to run from that year, but Northern Ireland secretary, James Brokenshire said they should be applied from 1 July 2017, meaning that the donations for the Brexit referendum campaign would not be made public.
Indeed, on Tuesday lawmakers were set to discuss a law that would allow those donations to remain secret.
That raised questions about fundraising during the EU referendum in 2016, especially the £435,000 donation from the Constitutional Research Council (CRC), the largest ever made to a party in Northern Ireland, details of which remained in the dark.
The controversy was sparked because half of that money was spent on wraparound advertising in London (not in NI), which the DUP defended because the referendum was "UK-wide".
Shadow Northern Ireland secretary, Owen Smith said: "This is just the latest in a series of dodgy deals being done between the government and their mates in the DUP, but it is arguably the most egregious abuse of power.
"All of the parties in Northern Ireland say they are committed to transparency in respect of their donations but there is only one party – the DUP – who oppose it applying from January 2014. And we all know why," he added.
Séamus Magee, the former head of the Electoral Commission in Northern Ireland, hinted at the possibility that this leniency on the government’s part was because of the deal it wanted to strike with the DUP.
"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 Jan 2014."