Police investigate £500,000 donations to Reform UK from Tice company

The Metropolitan Police were investigating two £250,000 donations to Reform UK from Britain Means Business, a company controlled by the party’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, after the Electoral Commission referred the payments for scrutiny. The donations were made in the run-up to the 2024 general election and were listed on commission filings as coming from the company, not from Tice personally.

The case has sharpened attention on the basic questions that sit at the heart of UK party-finance rules: who the donor really is, whether the donor is permissible, and whether the paperwork accurately records the source of the money. British law allows companies to give to political parties, but parties must verify that donations come from an eligible source and disclose them properly to the Electoral Commission. With Britain Means Business controlled by Tice while he was Reform UK chairman, investigators were examining not just the size of the gifts but the relationship between the donor and the party leadership.

Reform UK’s finances were already under pressure from earlier scrutiny of large donations and loans linked to wealthy backers. Tice has been a central figure in that funding picture, and Reform has relied heavily on him and other rich supporters. That dependence has made each new disclosure politically sensitive, because it raises questions about whether the party’s funding model is broad-based or concentrated in a small circle of benefactors.

Tice said the money came from a successful business and dismissed the allegations as a politically motivated smear campaign. Labour said the allegations raised legitimate questions over Reform’s finances. The accusations have landed in a familiar place for British politics, where funding scandals from cash-for-honours to later donor controversies have repeatedly turned on whether money was being channelled in a way voters could not easily see.

BBC reporting also said Tice separately wrote to the head of the National Crime Agency asking whether it would investigate possible leaks of his private financial information to the media. As the police review of the Reform donations continued, the larger issue remained unchanged: whether a party that has built its pitch on clean-up politics can withstand a closer look at where its money came from and how it was disclosed.