Going undercover to expose Reform's secret donations plot

Nigel Farage and other senior members of Reform UK have been filmed by undercover reporters celebrating secret new foreign donations. [Subscribe to our Substack newsletter: https://channel4news.substack.com/subscribe] Channel 4 News and @VerbatimInvestigations, a group of investigative journalists, reveal a plot to break the law on party funding at the highest levels of Reform UK. Earlier this year James Orr, the party’s Head of Policy, and Dan Jukes, a close aide to Nigel Farage, arranged for a US company to secretly fund three influential polls that were commissioned by the party. Mr Orr and Mr Jukes did not know that the supposed donors behind the US company were actually an undercover team from Verbatim posing as a wealthy American and his UK-based son, “William Lockwood”. The US company that made the poll payments and the supposed American financier, resident in the US, are not permissible donors under electoral law. Donations of this size must be declared to the Electoral Commission. Mr Jukes also proposed a scheme to get a larger sum of money into the party by having the American father donate via his UK-resident son. This would be illegal. The undercover work was conducted by Verbatim, an investigative group independent of Channel 4 News that was founded by journalists from the Centre for Climate Reporting. After being approached by Verbatim with the findings, journalists at Channel 4 News have since thoroughly checked and verified them. Channel 4 News did not pay for the polling and paid no money to Verbatim or any associated company. Channel 4 News approached Reform UK, Mr Farage, Mr Jukes and Mr Orr for comment on the findings of this investigation. They did not comment but we understand they deny the allegations in full. JL Partners, which conducted the polls, said it holds itself to high standards. A spokesman said: "Despite there being no concern about the accuracy of our work, the report did reveal weaknesses in our procedures. For that reason JL Partners is reviewing those procedures in order to eliminate possible grey areas and ambiguities and strengthen our safeguards for the future." A spokesperson from Telegraph Media Group said: "We are reviewing our future relationship with this polling company, as we believe we have been misled. As a matter of precaution we have suspended the relevant articles while The British Polling Council conducts a review." The Times said it “was not made aware of Reform’s involvement in commissioning and arranging payment of the poll”. The British Polling Council said its members must declare publicly who has commissioned their polls. A spokeswoman said: “From the information provided to us by Channel 4 News, it appears there may have been deliberate breaches of this rule." ------- Get more news at our site - https://www.channel4.com/news/ Subscribe to our Substack newsletter: https://channel4news.substack.com/subscribe Follow us: TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@c4news Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/channel4news/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/Channel4News Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/