The UK just made it much harder to buy a British election

A year-long residency test, profit-tested company donations, and a new duty on candidates to prove where their money came from form part of the government’s full response to the Rycroft Review.

On Monday (6 July), the government moved to close the gap, confirming a package of reforms that accepts the remaining recommendations of the independent Rycroft Review in full.

The headline measure is a new time-bound cap on large political donations from people who have recently moved to the UK – in effect, a residency clock.

Anyone returning to or arriving in the country will now be subject to the £100,000 cap on donations for at least a full calendar year, not just those registered to vote overseas.

The change is designed to stop the previously announced overseas donor cap being dodged by the simple expedient of moving back to Britain, writing a very large cheque, and leaving again.

Secretary of State Steve Reed said British democracy “is not for sale”, adding that the rules would shut down dodgy funding and stop foreign money influencing elections.

Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister Darren Jones went further, pointing at the machinery behind the money: “For too long, foreign money, foreign bot farms and foreign powers have exploited the system, trying to warp our elections and sow division in our country for their own ends.”

Following the profits, not the revenue

The most technically significant change is buried in the corporate rules. Company donations will now be assessed against post-tax profits over the previous five years, rather than revenue alone.

Revenue is easy to manufacture: anyone can set up a business that books high turnover without demonstrating how it operates, where its money comes from, or whether it pays tax in the UK. Profit, audited and taxed over five years, is much harder to fake.

The shift tightens rules already set out in the Representation of the People Bill, which requires donating companies to show a genuine connection to the UK or Ireland – headquartered here, majority owned or controlled by UK electors or citizens, and with sufficient income to cover the donation.

Philip Rycroft had argued in his review that the government’s original revenue test could be further tightened, and the Electoral Commission and the Committee on Standards in Public Life backed the profits-based approach. The government has now accepted it.

Candidates also face new obligations. For the first time, they will be required to prove that campaign funding received before they officially became a candidate came from legitimate sources, and to declare pre-candidacy donations above £2,230.

That closes a long-standing gap where money received before the regulated election period currently escapes the same scrutiny, meaning illegitimate funding could sit undeclared and later bankroll a campaign.

Crypto ban

The reforms complete a response that began in March, when the government accepted the review’s two most urgent recommendations with immediate effect: the £100,000 cap on donations from overseas electors and a full ban on cryptocurrency donations.

The crypto ban addressed a specifically technological vulnerability. Rycroft’s review warned that AI-assisted tools could break cryptoassets into amounts small enough to slip below declaration thresholds, and that regulators and parties lacked the expertise to trace the history of digital assets arriving in party coffers.

The review itself was commissioned in December 2025 after Nathan Gill, Reform UK’s former leader in Wales, was convicted and sentenced to 10-and-a-half years in prison for accepting bribes to promote pro-Russian narratives.

Rycroft concluded that foreign interests posed a “persistent problem”, seeking both direct leverage over parties and wider division through social media, and warned that without swift action the threats risked running away from the government.

The reforms will now move forward as amendments to the Representation of the People Bill, which returns to the Commons for Report stage in the week commencing 13 July.

Whether the residency clock and profit tests prove watertight will depend on enforcement and on whether the Electoral Commission gets the investigative capability the review said it lacked.

But this should speed the end of an era in which foreign money could enter British politics through a shell company, a crypto wallet, or a conveniently timed relocation.

Now read: Farage failed to declare gifts from convicted fraudster, Reform admits