Lords back law to reveal who donates to political parties in NI
A PEER has suggested that the DUP may have received “Russian money” to pay for a pro-Brexit newspaper advert.
Lord Tyler was speaking as peers backed legislation to publish names of those who made donations to political parties in Northern Ireland from July 2017.
But the Liberal Democrats said the move should be backdated to 2014, and party member Lord Tyler warned there was “continuing suspicion of a case of very serious political money laundering”. He said the basic facts were not in dispute: “The DUP received a sum approaching half a million pounds from an undisclosed source for its campaign in the 2016 EU referendum.”
The DUP spent £425,000 paying for an advert in the Metro newspaper in Great Britain.
Labour has claimed the Government’s failure to backdate the naming of political donors in Northern Ireland was a bid to mask a huge Brexit-backing donation to the DUP.
Lord Tyler asked in the Lords if it was a “complete coincidence that the ministerial decision to restrict the retrospectivity to carefully avoid any reference to this transaction came just days after the Government had to pay a price for DUP support in the Commons having lost its majority”.
He asked if it was part of the deal and whether the Northern Ireland Secretary had been briefed on the “potentially illegal donation that was involved”.
Lord Tyler said: “We now know the Russians took a considerable interest in the outcome of our referendum. Perhaps it was Russian money that was being channelled by this means.”
DUP peer Lord Wallace Browne said the donation from the Constitutional Research Council, a little-known group of pro-union business figures, was declared. “The uses to which the money was put were fully disclosed to the Electoral Commission which accepted the bona fides of the Council.”
The Transparency of Donations and Loans (NI Political Parties) Order 2018 was approved without a vote.