Senior Reform UK Official Cast Doubt on Legality of £72m Donations Months Before They Were Given, Undercover Footage Shows

A senior Reform UK official raised questions about whether major donations from billionaire backers would be legal under a proposed foreign donors cap three months before £72m was given to the party, newly released undercover footage shows.

James Orr, who was then Reform UK's head of policy and a Cambridge professor, discussed potential difficulties around future donations from Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo with an undercover reporter from the investigative reporting group Verbatim, who was posing as a potential donor.

In the footage, Orr spoke about ‘filling the war chest in anticipation’ of tougher donations rules, describing the move as the establishment trying to ‘kneecap’ the party, and expressed doubt about whether the two men's donations would survive the new rules.

Orr was suspended as Reform's head of policy last month after Channel 4 broadcast earlier Verbatim filming in which he appeared to discuss ways to get around funding laws to allow donations from a US-based donor. The matter is under police investigation and he remains suspended, although Reform has released its own report clearing Orr and another official of wrongdoing.

The new footage has been shared with the Guardian amid a public debate about whether the two £36m donations from Harborne and Delo will be allowed under the cap. The party maintains the donations are legal, pointing out that the retrospective overseas donor cap has not yet been passed into law.

The new law will put a £100,000 limit on how much overseas donors can give to a political party. It will apply to donations made after March 2026, and will require any domestic donor who wants to give more than £100,000 to have been resident in the UK for at least a calendar year.

In the footage, recorded in July this year, Orr believed Delo would probably meet the residency test unless he was required to have been a tax resident, in which case he would be ‘stuffed’. Harborne, who had been living in Thailand until he registered to vote in Hampshire this summer, was ‘probably more of a challenge’, Orr said, and could not give anything for 12 months after moving back.

Orr also said the party was too reliant on Harborne and Delo as ‘two big whales’, called the retrospective law ‘unheard of’, and said Reform would challenge it in the courts through judicial review, adding that the party had been working hard on ‘filling the war chest’ in anticipation of something ‘quite brutal’.

Orr referred to the ‘complicated backstory’ of Delo, a British-born billionaire who was convicted in the US in 2022 for failing to implement adequate anti-money laundering controls in his cryptocurrency business and was later pardoned by Donald Trump. He also spoke of spending time on a boat with Delo in the Peloponnese this summer, although lawyers for Delo said he did not own a yacht.

A Reform UK spokesperson said: ‘We are 100% confident both [donations] are legal and won't ever have to be handed back.’ Orr did not respond to a request for comment; he has previously denied wrongdoing over electoral laws on overseas funding and dismissed Verbatim as ‘politically motivated actors trying to discredit a political opponent through dubious legal means’.

Lawyers for Harborne described Orr's comments as private speculation that did not represent established facts. Delo's lawyers said he would not be drawn into speculation about a conversation he was not party to, or the legal effect of a law yet to be passed, adding that he had taken extensive legal advice on his donations. Reform has previously said it intends to take legal action against Verbatim and its directors over the undercover filming.