Nigel Farage has been warned that he could receive a “stiffer penalty” after he claimed that the result of an inquiry into his undeclared £5m donation from a crypto billionaire is rigged against him.
The leader of Reform UK has just returned to parliament after winning a by-election he called in his Clacton constituency in protest at the Commons’ standards inquiry against him over the donation from Christopher Harborne.
He suggested to the BBC that he would not get a fair hearing on whether he broke parliamentary rules for failing to declare the cash, because the MPs on the committee have already prejudged him as guilty.
He told the BBC: “Well, I mean, that investigation, the outcome. Have you seen who is on the committee? I think we know the outcome already.”
But former Labour deputy leader Baroness Harriet Harman, who chaired the Privileges Committee inquiry into the Boris Johnson Partygate scandal where the former prime minister received a stiffer penalty for his attacks on the process, warned Mr Farage could face the same fate, if he is found to have breached the rules.
She told The Independent: “It is quite surprising he should question integrity of the committee. Half the Standards Committee is made up of independent lay members who have been chosen for their expertise and history in dealing with regulatory matters.
“In the end, the committee members are there to ensure the rules are followed and they expect those being investigated to uphold the integrity of the process. If Mr Farage were to simply apologise and register the donation then that would probably be an end to the matter.
“But on the other end of the scale, if he attacks the integrity of the process then he undermining it and faces a stiffer penalty.
“With Boris Johnson right up to the last minute we gave him the opportunity to make amends and apologise and that would have been an end of the matter. But because he resisted and attacked the process the penalty was stiffer.”
Mr Harborne’s donation was received before Mr Farage became an MP in July 2024 but was less than a year before the election so it fell into the period when it should have been declared, according to complainants. Mr Farage has insisted that the donation was personal to pay for his private security, so there was no need to declare it.
Mr Farage was challenged by the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason over his decision to call a by-election in Clacton in August in protest against the probe, a contest where no other major party stood and Mr Farage had to spend most of his time contesting comedian candidate Count Binface.
Explaining that he had gone to his constituents because of the investigation against him, the Reform UK leader lashed out, attacking the integrity of the committee membership chaired by Tory MP Alberto Costa, echoing Boris Johnson’s attack on the Privileges Committee in 2022.
Mr Mason asked Mr Farage: “You are clearly suggesting you don’t think they can give you a fair hearing?”
Mr Farage responded: “If you look at the composition. If you look at the political composition of the committee, I thought before they gave a judgment, we’d ask the people to give a judgment.”
In a bid to justify the by-election which opponents said turned him into a joke fighting a bin, Mr Farage said: “I was in a really peculiar situation where you know the Standards Committee were investigating me.
“You could ask me questions about it. I’m not allowed to answer under the rules. I heard someone, [Labour deputy leader] Lucy Powell, say it could take up to a year for there to be a decision on this, and so I’m being judged guilty every single day by the media, by everybody.
“I’m guilty not just of that, almost everything. And so I said, you know what? Whilst Westminster obsesses about money, about security, about whether this was political or personal, and it goes on every day. Do you know what we’ll do? We’ll ask the people. I will let the people of Clacton, the voters, be the judge.”
Mr Farage then invoked the case of Mr Johnson when he was found guilty of lying to parliament over Partygate drinking in Downing Street as a reason to be suspicious of the investigation.
Asked about the standards commissioner Daniel Greenberg, he said: “I have no questions about him, but I do think, you know, and probably Boris Johnson might say the same.
“I do think to be judged by members of parliament of other political parties who you’re fighting against in by-elections or general elections, I think that raises the question. I really do, and I think if we’re going to have, I’m looking ahead, going to have standards, and surely we need to have people who are actually apolitical making those decisions.”
Bridget Phillipson, chair of the Labour Party, described Mr Farage’s claims as “excuses over his secret £5 million ‘gift’”.
She said: “Yet again it’s everyone’s fault apart from his own. Nigel Farage needs to stop the desperate deflection tactics and finally come clean about the sleaze and scandal he and Reform are now drowning in.”
The committee is made up of 14 members, seven of whom are independent lay members from outside parliament. The seven MPs include four from Labour, two Tories and one Lib Dem. Traditionally, it is chaired by an MP from the official opposition party and in this session the chair is Tory MP Alberto Costa.
Reform does not have a member because it only had five MPs elected in the general election, below the threshold needed to be on committees.
If the committee finds Mr Farage has broken the rules and recommends that he is suspended from Parliament for more than 10 days as a result, it could trigger a second by-election in Clacton.
The Standards Committee declined to comment.