GRP-05Delivery risk: AmberGate: pending
Trust in political money
A broad priority grouping A35, A36; its scores are its own, never an average of its members.
Provisional single-reviewer assessment; not an approved business case.
- Who and where
- Population not yet defined. Jurisdiction: not defined.
- Result so far
- Range if completed: 10.0–19.0 out of 30 (equal weights; not yet assessed: increment beyond baseline (Ad), expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co))
- Funded now (baseline)
- Funded baseline not yet stated
- The change assessed (marginal)
- Marginal change not yet defined
- Domain home: Political funding
- In the national plan: Kept outside the national lists
What the evidence supports—and the next decision
Political finance transparency, donation rules and enforcement are separate choices. Donor concentration does not prove a purchased policy outcome.
AI-assisted analytical follow-up · 8 October 2026. Proposed appraisal design; the attributed scores below are unchanged. No funding or delivery agreement is implied.
- Define the change
- Specify the disclosure or enforcement gap and compare narrowly drafted options against current law and regulator capacity.
- Test whether it works
- Timeliness, completeness, compliance and enforceable cases; public trust is a secondary survey outcome, not proof of causality.
- Establish the cost
- Regulator staff, systems, party and donor compliance, litigation and transition.
- Protect against harm
- Apply rules consistently across parties and preserve lawful political participation and appeal rights.
Read with the outcome evidence and sources in the full assessment. Monitoring proposals are not existing baseline measurements. A numerical benefit or cost score needs evidence for the defined increment, not just the scale of the problem.
Full assessment of Trust in political money: ten criteria, scenarios, delivery, costs and monitoring
The ten criteria (0–3)
Each criterion is scored 0 to 3 by the reviewer. “Not yet assessed” means unknown: it is never counted as zero.
Scale and severity (Sc)2 of 3 — Serious harm to a defined group or widespread moderate harm
Reviewer’s reason: Provisional problem-importance judgement from linked site pages; not the scale of achievable benefit.
Increment beyond baseline (Ad)Not yet assessed
Reviewer’s reason: Separate disclosure, enforcement and donation limits; define regulator powers, legal safeguards and consultation. A missing rating requires a defined marginal change.
Confidence in the proposed action (Ev)0 of 3 — No effect evaluation
Reviewer’s reason: Disclosure/enforcement recommendations do not establish an effect on trust; voting-system change is a separate constitutional choice.
Expected incremental benefit (Bn)Not yet assessed
Reviewer’s reason: Unknown unless a reasonably defined target-population benefit can be judged; no bonus merely for spanning domains.
Residual harms (Hm)1 of 3 — Material harm/unresolved mitigation
Reviewer’s reason: Displacement of funding, legal challenge and unequal burdens; no guaranteed trust gain.
Incremental affordability (Co)Not yet assessed
Reviewer’s reason: Regulator staffing, IT, compliance, litigation and transition.
Delivery capacity (Ca)2 of 3 — Stretched but plausibly obtainable
Reviewer’s reason: Separate disclosure, enforcement and donation limits; define regulator powers, legal safeguards and consultation.
Distribution (Fa)2 of 3 — Mixed or broadly neutral with safeguards
Reviewer’s reason: Provisional distribution judgement for the stated target; verify who pays, who gains and excluded groups.
Meaningful first outcome (Ti)2 of 3 — More than one and up to three years
Reviewer’s reason: First meaningful outcome, not announcement: Disclosure completeness, timeliness and compliance; trust measured separately.
Readiness (Rd)1 of 3 — Legislation/external agreement or major enabling work
Reviewer’s reason: Parliament, government and Electoral Commission; Institutional design and safeguards
Four weightings
Normalised as 10 × weighted sum ÷ sum of weights, on a 0–30 scale. Where a criterion is not yet assessed, the range is the lowest and highest result if it were later scored 0 or 3 — not a score, a confidence interval or a rank.
- Equal weights: Range if completed: 10.0–19.0 out of 30. Not yet assessed: increment beyond baseline (Ad), expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Evidence doubled: Range if completed: 9.1–17.3 out of 30. Not yet assessed: increment beyond baseline (Ad), expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Scale doubled: Range if completed: 10.9–19.1 out of 30. Not yet assessed: increment beyond baseline (Ad), expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Cost ignored (the funding gate still applies): Range if completed: 11.1–17.8 out of 30. Not yet assessed: increment beyond baseline (Ad), expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
Funding gate: Not passed — the cost is not yet assessed or no allocation is committed for this scope. Ignoring cost in a weighting never removes the gate.
Delivery risk and gate
Delivery risk shown: AmberReview’s claim: Amber. Best the recorded evidence allows: Amber.
Review’s reason: Regulator staffing, IT, compliance, litigation and transition.
Why it is not Green yet
- Scope (population, place and increment) not verified against the delivery baseline.
- No verified owner with the powers in place.
- Delivery capacity not verified.
- Lifetime incremental costs not complete.
- No credible funding (a committed allocation for the scope).
- Safeguards not specified.
- Monitoring lacks a metric, a data source or a baseline.
Green needs verified scope, a verified owner with the powers, verified capacity, complete lifetime costs with credible funding, specified safeguards and monitoring with a metric, source and baseline. Amber means appraisal gaps remain; Red means a material delivery obstacle. Red does not mean unimportant.
Gate: Pending — appraisal incomplete (review label: “Pending: incomplete appraisal”).
Why: Scores incomplete; Funding gate not passed (cost unknown or no credible funding).
The gate is separate from national list membership: being listed does not make an option eligible, and an eligible option need not be listed.
Cost and funding
Lifetime costing: Not established. Review: “Full incremental costing not established in reviewed material”.
Still to cost: Regulator staffing, IT, compliance, litigation and transition.
Funding status: not established in review.
Owner, powers and capacity
Proposed owner: Parliament, government and Electoral Commission (proposed, unverified).
Powers: needs legislation or external agreement. Capacity: unverified.
Powers and capacity read from the review’s Rd and Ca anchors; no proposed owner has agreed to act (the review: “Proposed owners have not agreed to act”).
- England:
- not assessed
- Scotland:
- not assessed
- Wales:
- not assessed
- Northern Ireland:
- not assessed
Not defined in the review.
Dependencies, safeguards and risks
Depends on: None recorded.
Safeguards
- define regulator powers, legal safeguards and consultation (proposed, not yet specified)
Risks and residual harms: Displacement of funding, legal challenge and unequal burdens; no guaranteed trust gain.
Monitoring and measured results
Metric: Disclosure completeness, timeliness and compliance; trust measured separately.
Data source: Not yet named. Baseline: Not yet established.
Measures already on the domain page
- Days from accepting a donation to publication: latest not published; baseline not published (United Kingdom (published register coverage)).
- Share of private donations going to the four largest recipients: latest 94% (2025); baseline not published (United Kingdom (published register coverage)).
- Public funds as a share of reported party receipts: latest 23.4% (2025); baseline not published (United Kingdom (published register coverage)).
A page measure is not necessarily the review’s metric; linking the two is an editorial decision still to be made.
Evidence for the outcome
Outcome: Disclosure completeness, timeliness and compliance; trust measured separately.
Disclosure/enforcement recommendations do not establish an effect on trust; voting-system change is a separate constitutional choice.
SWOT points it addresses
- The current maximum Electoral Commission civil fine is £20,000 per offence. Government intends a £500,000 limit through secondary legislation; that intention is not the present penalty. (Political funding)
- Disclosure shows who gave, not whether money bought influence; routes such as unincorporated associations and loans are harder to trace. (Political funding)
- A public register records donations to parties: 17 parties reported private donations in 2025, and every entry can be checked by donor and date. (Political funding)
- Some parties depend on very few donors: among parties with at least £1m of private donations, the top ten donors gave between 25% (Liberal Democrats) and 83% (Reform UK) of the total. (Political funding)
- Faster, linked reporting with proportionate penalties could be weighed against fully costed options for capping donations and replacing the lost income. (Political funding)
Review record
Assessment status: Provisional single-reviewer assessment; not an approved business case.
Reviewer: Original assessment author (name not supplied). Reviewed: 6 October 2026.
Scored in the working review of 6 October 2026 on the shared ten-criterion scale (one reviewer); not independently calibrated.
First 90 days (review): Produce a signed scope and current-delivery baseline; Separate disclosure, enforcement and donation limits; define regulator powers, legal safeguards and consultation. Obtain incremental costs and an accountable decision before expansion.
Decision route: Institutional design and safeguards
An editorial screening framework by one reviewer, not a formal appraisal or business case. Proposed owners have not agreed to act.