Welsh government commits to making lying in politics illegal

The Labour-led Welsh government has committed to introduce “globally pioneering” legislation that would in effect make lying in politics there illegal.

Members of the Senedd described it as a historic moment that would combat the “existential threat” that lying in politics poses to democracy.

After a passionate and dramatic debate in the Welsh parliament on Tuesday evening, the government’s counsel general, Mick Antoniw, said the legislation would be introduced before the next Welsh elections in two years’ time.

He said: “The Welsh government will bring forward legislation before 2026 for the disqualification of members and candidates found guilty of deliberate deception through an independent judicial process.”

Antoniw said the practical details of how a law to tackle lying would work would need to be worked out and he called for cross-party cooperation.

The Plaid Cymru politician Adam Price, who has led the calls for lying by politicians to be outlawed, said: “What has been announced is truly historic, globally pioneering. We have a commitment from our government that our democracy will be the first in the world to introduce a general prohibition on deception by politicians.

“We are at the beginning of a global movement. We are going to outlaw political lying.”

Price said truth was at the heart of democracy, but there had been a collapse in trust in politicians. He said: “That is an existential threat. A democracy starts to break down if the electors can’t trust what the elected say.

“We have to innovate, we have to try different things. It’s a small minority of politicians, populist demagogues, that deliberately distort the truth for their own political gain, but they poison the well for everyone. It is never acceptable for politicians to deliberately deceive.”

During the debate, the Labour member Alun Davies accused the leader of the Tories in Wales, Andrew RT Davies, of tweeting a “direct lie” earlier on Tuesday that Labour want to pay illegal immigrants £1,600 a month.

He said: “This takes our politics into the gutter and stops us engaging with each other in real political debate.”

Another Labour member, Lee Waters, said: “Boris Johnson lied his way to Downing Street and lied his way out again. Politics in this country has become darker. The public needs to know they can trust what is being said. Lying cannot become the norm.”

While several other countries have laws that ban lying in certain circumstances, the Welsh version is set to go further.

The co-director of the thinktank Compassion in Politics, Jennifer Nadel, welcomed the announcement. She said: “Public confidence in politicians is at an all-time low. This move is the beginning of a political reset. Voters want honesty and this means that Wales will become the first country to insist that politicians and candidates are obliged by law to tell the truth.

“Lying in politics has for too long been normalised. Voters expect and deserve more and now they will have it.”

Sam Fowles, a barrister who has been advising Adam Price, said: “Truth-telling is essential to democracy. As voters, we should be entitled to rely on the statements made by our elected representatives.

“This measure will ensure that politicians are held to the same standards as lawyers and doctors who already have enforceable truth-telling obligations. This seems to me to be long overdue.”