Ministers will publish review by Philip Rycroft, which will make recommendations relevant to all the political parties, today
The UK inflation rate held steady at 3% in February, before Donald Trump’s Iran war drove up global energy costs, threatening a renewed price jump, Heather Stewart reports.
This is what parliament’s joint committee on the national security strategy said about the case for banning cryptocurrency donations to political parties in a report on political finance and foreign influence published last week.
Crypto donations pose an unnecessary and unacceptably high risk to the integrity of the political finance system and public trust in it. We accept that future regulations may institutionalise the use of alternative payment systems for use in donations. At present, however, the opportunity to evade rules is too high, the adequacy of mitigations too low, and the resource cost of attempting to implement acceptable oversight is disproportionate. We see no democratic imperative to permit the use of crypto in political finance until adequate safeguards are in place.
Crypto also poses wider upstream risks to the integrity of political finance: donors can convert ‘dirty’ foreign crypto funds into ‘clean’ UK fiat and then donate it without arousing much suspicion. A ‘last mile’ ban on crypto donations is therefore not a panacea. Specialist capabilities to address upstream risks are underpowered and require further work.
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