Political finance: standards, funding and review

Democracy and Money · Civil Liberties Action · 10 October 2026

Readers should be able to see where a claim comes from, reproduce its calculation and identify what remains uncertain. These are the standards for CLA’s political-finance work.

Our position and responsibility

CLA is a campaigning project concerned with democracy, civil liberties, drug policy and addiction. CLA is organisationally independent of political parties and does not stand candidates. The founder’s Labour Party membership is disclosed below. Our interests and campaign aims are visible; our factual methods must apply consistently to every party.

CLA is currently founder-led and is not a registered charity. Independent board oversight is a proposed arrangement, not an established safeguard. The political-finance project is published in the organisation’s name, with research and corrections handled through policy@civillibertiesaction.org.uk.

Funding and relevant interests

Declaration confirmed by the founder on 10 October 2026.

The founder’s party membership is a relevant political interest. Our published standards require the same evidential rules, scrutiny and corrections process for every party, including Labour. Readers can inspect our sources, reproduce the calculations and challenge our findings.

This declaration records information supplied by the founder; it has not been independently verified. An itemised account of the founder’s contributions and CLA’s expenditure has not yet been published. The declaration does not certify that a comprehensive register of all other financial or political interests has been completed.

CLA’s support page and merchandise shop provide ways to support the project. The funding statement above describes receipts as at the declaration date. Any later funding, material support or relevant interest should be recorded in a dated update. Project-specific support should also be identified alongside the publication it funds.

Funders must have no right to alter findings, suppress inconvenient evidence or choose which parties are subjected to different standards. Editorial responsibility remains with CLA. Questions or corrections about this declaration can be sent to policy@civillibertiesaction.org.uk.

Start with a question and use the same rules

Define the question, period, population and exclusions before interpreting results. Apply common rules to all parties. Explain any selection of case studies. An allegation, a large donation or a corporate connection does not establish wrongdoing.

Keep the evidence categories separate

Distinguish official disclosures, reported receipts, pledges, allegations and CLA’s own calculations. A party’s statement that money was received is evidence of its account, not independent verification of a bank transfer. Preserve news dates separately from donation dates. Match a report to existing records before adding any unmatched amount.

Publish coverage, not an impression of completeness

The default 2026 view combines official January–June records with selected later reported receipts. These are incomplete year-to-date subtotals. News searches use a common inclusion threshold and a logged method; no party is certified complete. A missing story, missing donor or zero matching records is not proof of no funding.

Official records remain the 9 October 2026 snapshot. Updates are reviewed releases, not an automatic live feed. New official releases should be preserved, compared by record reference, reconciled and reviewed before replacing the public snapshot. News matches should change status rather than create duplicate money. There is no unattended update schedule for this tool.

Verify identities without erasing uncertainty

Names alone are not enough to join people. Preserve company numbers, original donor IDs and the exact record scope of each reviewed link. Company control is dated context, not a reason to treat every related entity as one legal donor. Keep unresolved candidates separate. Do not publish donor home addresses, postcodes or birth dates.

A reviewed company number confirms a record link to the filed company identity; it does not independently validate every fact in a company filing or identify all ultimate sources of money. For time comparisons, a partial link must not make an existing donor ID appear new.

Make calculations inspectable

Show the denominator, period and exclusions for every headline percentage. Use integer pence. Provide exact records, downloadable data and calculation code. Scenarios that remove donors describe arithmetic; they are not forecasts of how a party or donor would react. Annual accounts, central-party figures, party-wide disclosures and personal politician interests have different boundaries.

Correct openly and invite a response

Corrections should identify the affected claim or record, the old and new interpretation, the reason and the date. Preserve the preceding snapshot and a record of changes. Distinguish new information from a mistake. Readers can send a record reference, source and explanation to the policy address.

Before publishing material criticism of an identifiable person or organisation, give them a fair opportunity to respond to specific points, record the contact and deadline, and include a fair account of substantive replies. The current descriptive investigation makes no allegation of wrongdoing. Legal and editorial review should be sought where the subject or allegations require it.

AI assistance and editorial accountability

AI-assisted research and coding were used to prepare this explorer and its analysis. Source records and reproducible calculations are the evidence. Automated checks, separate AI passes and internal source reviews are not an independent human audit. Publication responsibility remains with CLA.

What has and has not been checked

The release includes numerical reconciliation tests, explicit identity allowlists, duplicate controls, source links and a targeted loan-conversion reconciliation. Browser interactions have been exercised in a document simulation. Real-browser visual, mobile, keyboard and assistive-technology acceptance testing remains outstanding; simulation cannot establish accessibility conformance.

External review is on hold and has not been commissioned. No independent reviewer has been appointed or paid. A public brief, sample and reproducibility package remain available. If a review is commissioned later, its reviewer, scope, conflicts, payment arrangements, findings and CLA’s response should be published. This project must not be described as independently audited.