Margot Mollat
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margotmollat.bsky.social
Margot Mollat
@margotmollat.bsky.social
870 followers 850 following 100 posts
Senior Research & Policy Manager at Transparency International UK. Previously Senior Researcher at the APPG on Anti-Corruption & Responsible Tax, and investigator at Global Witness. All things corruption and dirty money.
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Reposted by Margot Mollat
ukanticorruptioncoalition.org
Lloyd Hatton MP: “It really is very simple. We should be able to assess what tax is owed and then collect it. HMRC must get a firmer grip on the scale of wealth that is currently stashed away offshore... it’s clear we need to bolster its ability to spot and stop tax dodging.”
November 6, 2025 at 10:43 AM
Reposted by Margot Mollat
alexparsons.bsky.social
Obvs everyone's disappointed they're not just hitting the "ban big donors" button - but this fits into my argument that they're not going to do that spontaneously, the useful work from the outside is trying to make an exit ramp through public funding www.mysociety.org/2025/07/22/e...
Election finance and donor caps There are good foundations on improved electoral finance laws in the strategy. A key improvement is much stronger regulation of unincorporated associations: creating Know Your Donor requirements, and bringing the transparency thresholds into line with donations to parties and candidates. These transparency thresholds are too high (and have gotten higher), but this is an area that could (and should) be redressed through a statutory instrument at a later point. What this strategy does not go near is the idea of donation caps to limit the power of large donors. As we explored on our Beyond Transparency report, a key blocker in this area is both the comparative lack of public funding of elections in the UK compared to European and Anglophone countries, and a belief that public opinion is an obstacle to a move in that direction (public funding is not popular on its own, but the status quo is also deeply unpopular). In the spirit of “what is the work needed now to enable change by the end of the Parliament”, our key recommendation is that either government or civil society actors convene a citizens’ forum/assembly to further unblock this line of argument by creating a better understanding of how the public approach trade-offs in this area. There is good reason to believe that, while exactly what it looks like might be open to debate, increased levels of public funding are possible, enabling donor caps and restricting the uneven influence of wealth on elections. In the absence of this, we are unlikely to make substantial progress within this parliament. We need well-developed answers to the “how are we going to pay for elections then?” question — and to be building those answers now.
July 22, 2025 at 1:47 PM