LONDON — Britain’s most powerful union leader has warned Prime Minister Andy Burnham against capping individual donations to political parties in the U.K.
Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, told POLITICO he believes a cap could be a “step backwards” as any new law would likely capture donations from trade unions, not just those from individual tycoons and firms based in Britain.
“We all want to see our politics cleaned up, but I don’t want to see the voices of ordinary working people excluded from politics because we have a badly designed law,” he said in an interview ahead of the TUC’s annual meeting of 47 member unions on Sunday. “Until somebody can give me an assurance that you can design a law that doesn’t silence those voices, then I’m going to be skeptical about it.”
Nowak’s comments give a rare public glimpse of the tensions between Britain’s trade union movement and the ruling Labour Party, to which it donated nearly £5 million in 2025. It presents a test for Burnham, who rode a wave of union support to replace Keir Starmer as prime minister in July, but has staked his reputation on fixing a broken Westminster system.
The prime minister said last week that his government needs to “go further” to reform donation rules after large gifts declared by rival political parties have worried many on the British left. Nigel Farage’s populist right-wing party Reform UK received £9 million from the cryptocurrency investor Christopher Harborne last year, the largest single political donation from a living person in U.K. history.
Burnham declined MPs’ calls to use the government’s Representation of the People Bill as a vehicle for immediate change, as POLITICO revealed in August, but said the existing Defending Democracy Taskforce in the Cabinet Office will consider future changes.
Nowak said: “I do worry about the impact of individuals making really big individual donations to party politics, but it’s very hard to think about — certainly at this stage — how you would design a system that didn’t cut across trade union donations.
“And in my mind, absolutely unequivocally, trade union donations are the cleanest, most transparent form of political funding in this country. You’re talking about very small contributions made by members who democratically decide how much they pay, what it’s for, whether they affiliate to the Labour Party or not, and I wouldn’t want to see the voices of those workers excluded from politics because we designed the law badly.
“So I wouldn’t rule it out in the future, but anything that potentially captures union political funding, when unions are already incredibly overregulated in this area, I think would be a step backwards.”
The TUC does not donate to Labour itself, and Nowak said he has not raised the issue with Burnham directly.
However, the body represents all 11 of the “affiliated” unions that pay part of their members’ subscriptions into the Labour Party, several of which are concerned about the prospect of a cap. Some unions also make large individual donations to Labour, which was born out of the union movement in the early 1900s.
The TUC wants to ban donations by overseas residents and people who do not pay U.K. tax. However, the issue of individual donations by U.K.-based entities is more politically fraught.
The government declined to back an amendment put forward by Labour MP Stella Creasy to the Representation of the People Bill last week, which would have introduced a cap of £100,000 per year on individual U.K.-based donors — with a carve-out for trade union political funds. Creasy said the latest version of her amendment would have “completely exempt[ed] trade unions” from the cap.
Creasy said that a cross-party group of peers is already working on proposing similar amendments to the bill when it is scrutinized in the House of Lords in the coming months. She added: “Without a cap, it’s clear the amounts of money flooding into our democracy could drown out everyone else’s voices — including the trade unions.”
‘Stakeholders to be managed’
Nowak made his comments as part of a wide-ranging interview ahead of the TUC’s four-day annual meeting in Brighton, where the union body will campaign for a tax rise on banks to fund a permanent “social tariff” lowering energy bills for low and middle earners.
He wrote to ministers this week calling for a “comprehensive plan” to ensure workers have a say on AI practices at their own workplaces. He said: “I think at some stage it will require primary legislation.”
Nowak met Burnham face-to-face on Monday and said they discussed his promises to “reindustrialize” Britain and bring more public sector contracts in-house, as well as the TUC’s push for the government to deliver the Employment Rights Act — Labour’s flagship set of workplace reforms — “in full.”
Some unions will use next week’s Congress, where either Burnham or a senior Cabinet ally is expected to speak, to press the government for a second employment rights bill to go further than the first Act. This would prompt a backlash from many business groups, which argue the new law, passed last December, is already adding burdensome red tape.
Nowak suggested he would back a second bill as part of a future general election manifesto, given many policies from the first Act haven’t been implemented yet. “I think it’s entirely legitimate to say, at the next election, what is Labour’s manifesto going to say about employment rights?” he said. “The idea that the Employment Rights Act is the finished article in terms of U.K. employment law, that nothing else needs to change, I think clearly is not the case.”
Elsewhere, Nowak said the government “could listen more” to unions when drawing up trade deals, as they have “real concerns” about a recent pact with the Gulf Co-Operation Council and ongoing talks about upgrading the U.K.’s free trade agreement with Turkey. “I’ve got concerns about any trade deals that say nothing about labor standards, say nothing about respect for union rights, and say very little about environmental standards — and I’ve made this point directly to [the] government,” he said.
He also said that Burnham’s agenda to move power and resources out of Westminster is not a “panacea,” adding: “I think it’s part of the solution. It’s not the solution in and of itself. Simply devolving powers without devolving responsibilities and real resources I don’t think is going to benefit anybody.”
‘Who knows what will be in the next manifesto’ on Europe
The TUC general secretary — who voiced support for a U.K.-EU customs union in 2025 — appeared to suggest that he believes Labour’s next election manifesto could end the party’s refusal to countenance either a customs union or single market relationship with Brussels.
“We need the closest possible working relationship and closest possible economic relationship,” he said. Citing Donald Trump’s tariffs on the automotive industry, he added: “We’ve got to avoid a situation where we are effectively held hostage by which side of the bed the president of the United States rolls out of in the morning.”
He went on: “Obviously the government has got the red lines it went into the last election with, and the commitments it made in the manifesto. I think the relationship is going to develop over time, and who knows what will be in the next manifesto?
“All I want is when both parties sit down at that U.K.-EU summit, we’re thinking about what is the best possible deal for U.K. jobs, for U.K. workers, and for not just closer economic ties, but also that Britain plays an important role in Europe politically.”
While the TUC does not engage with Farage’s Reform UK, Nowak speaks to the Liberal Democrats and Green Party, whose leader, Zack Polanski, he last met “about four or five months ago.”
Nowak suggested the Downing Street of previous Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who quit in July under pressure from his own MPs, had not fully appreciated the importance of trade unions to the wider country. “Sometimes it felt there was a sense that unions were stakeholders to be managed,” he said. “We represent millions of people at work … sometimes that was a frustration.”
However, Nowak said he is “heartened” by an initial bounce in poll ratings for Burnham’s Labour. “I’m confident we can get relationships with Andy Burnham and his government on the right footing right from the start,” he added.