Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if he will take steps in the forthcoming Elections Bill to to require submission of all on- and offline advertisements to the Electoral Commission as soon as they are published with data on who has sponsored the advertisement readily available to the public.

Current imprint rules require campaigners to include the name and address of a promoter, any person on whose behalf the material is published, and, for printed material, the printer’s details.

The Government has committed to adding unregistered third-party campaigning organisations to the list of entities who are required to include a digital imprint on their organic digital campaigning material and extend the Electoral Commission’s remit to be the primary enforcer of all imprint rules.

The Government has no plans to introduce a real-time submission system for digital and print advertisements to the Electoral Commission at this time, but welcome the steps taken by social media companies to create “advert libraries”.