LONDON — The watchdog meant to police transparency in the U.K.’s polling industry is struggling to punish rogue firms, its own officers warned in a private meeting leaked to POLITICO.

Officers of the British Polling Council (BPC) raised concerns at a meeting last week that they lack the power to effectively hold members to account — with one comparing the way the body is currently organized to a “bowling club.”

The downbeat comments come amid fresh scrutiny of the booming U.K. polling industry. A Channel 4 News investigation in September accused JL Partners, a prominent pollster founded by former Conservative Party adviser James Johnson, of securing newspaper coverage of two polls in the run-up to elections — without disclosing their links to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

The polls had in fact been paid for by two undercover reporters posing as a wealthy American benefactor and his son. The pair had offered their support to Reform via Farage’s advisers Dan Jukes and James Orr.

At the time, the BPC said in a statement it was “clear there have been breaches” of the body’s rules and that it would seek further information from JL Partners. The BPC’s own rulebook states that polling companies must disclose who has commissioned their research and that those who fail to do so can be kicked out.

Three people familiar with internal BPC discussions — granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter — said members had since urged the industry body to dismiss JL Partners, arguing the pollster, which declined to comment for this piece, had committed a cut-and-dried violation of the rules.

However, the firm has not been expelled more than a month later — prompting concern among some members that the BPC is ill-equipped to deal with any serious misconduct.

One of the people cited above, from a rival pollster to JL Partners, said: “If the BPC isn’t able to kick someone out who’s so brazenly ignoring the spirit of the rules, it does beg the question: what’s the point of it?”

Crisis meeting

Jane Green, the president of the organization, laid bare the scale of the challenge facing the industry body at the behind-closed-doors meeting last week, according to a transcript reviewed by POLITICO.

She told the session that the body was set up to deal with “small, little mistakes” that were quickly corrected, but that anything more contentious would be “a nightmare” to deal with, since the BPC is “essentially a club” in which members have “agreed to play nicely.”

Without naming JL Partners, she argued there is a risk a pollster could take legal action if the BPC attempts to sanction a member — in which case she and other officers would be personally liable and could face losing their homes.

“We’ve risked our own houses, my kids’ Lego budget, all the rest of it, right? This is not cool,” she said.

The Reform UK controversy erupted at a time the BPC had already been planning to set itself up as a company limited by guarantee, removing the risk of personal liability for its officers. It now faces a wider dilemma over whether to continue in its current form or strengthen its ability to hold members to account.

Martin Boon from the public opinion research firm DeltaPoll told the same meeting that the BPC “[doesn’t] have regulatory powers or regulatory budgets, and I think we have to be careful about going down that road,” according to the transcript.

Luke Tryl of pollster More in Common said that “strengthening the complaints bit of what we do” is “really important, because I think people are now looking to the industry [to show] that we are stepping up, we are addressing concerns.”

Several members were adamant during the meeting that the BPC should not broaden its remit, the transcript shows, saying that any regulation should be carried out by the separate Market Research Society, which does hold powers to sanction members and is currently conducting a separate review of JL Partners’ conduct.

However, BPC members also aired reservations at the meeting that the MRS can sometimes be obliged to follow up on “vexatious,” complaints and has “very little experience” of political research.

Green meanwhile told those present that the BPC could struggle to deliver planned training for journalists on Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification (MRP) polls — increasingly used across Westminster — due to a lack of resources.

She said she wanted to see “clear rules of disclosure” on such polls — but cautioned that reduced bandwidth meant the BPC could now find it difficult to lead that drive.

Green also discussed an artificial intelligence agent as a possible answer to the BPC’s lack of manpower, with the tool used to scrape news organizations for political polling to check they have complied with the rules.

‘The industry’s changed massively’

Uncertainty over the future of the BPC is especially vexed as the British polling industry grows and opinion surveys play an increasingly prominent role in elections.

Smaller parties have been gaining ground in the U.K. in recent years, challenging the long-held two-party system and complicating the polling landscape.

ORB International’s Johnny Heald told the meeting of pollsters: “As one of the founding [BPC] members, clearly we set out with very good intentions to be transparent, but the industry’s changed massively … The combined turnover of all companies in this room has got to be hundreds of millions, and our [BPC] income is £4,000.”

In an emailed statement to POLITICO, Green acknowledged that the Reform UK story had “increased the salience of some of the issues amongst members,” but stressed that the BPC had already been working on reforms to its legal structure to better protect officers from legal challenge.

“The BPC doesn’t have professional staff and is run by the three Officers, so we felt there was a need to widen the number of members to increase the resilience of the organisation in cases when officers are working, ill, overseas etc,” she said.

The BPC is, she said, keen to “facilitate a conversation about the nature of the BPC, given its foundations and narrow remit on transparency, and the tenor of the meeting was to retain the existing remit, but with some steps to strengthen, and I was delighted our committee has grown in size now, with a larger team.”

BRUSSELS — Privacy regulators want people wearing smart glasses in public to look and sound like a truck backing down a road.

Europe’s powerful data regulators have made stringent new recommendations on how smart glasses should alert people that the wearable devices are filming, including a combination of flashing lights, audio alerts and notifications sent to the phones of people nearby.

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB), made up of national privacy regulators across Europe, issued a statement about smart glasses on Tuesday, following a meeting in Brussels.

Privacy regulators are putting forward a united front on smart glasses, as privacy concerns about the wearable technology have multiplied since videos made with them have begun spreading online without the knowledge or consent of those being filmed.

The statement is not legally binding but will guide how privacy regulators in Europe assess whether smart glasses users and manufacturers are complying with EU privacy rules like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The regulators said smart glasses manufacturers should implement a combination of transparency measures to make other people aware that they are being recorded.

The measures may include lights or sounds when users are recording, requiring smart glasses users to activate them with an audible voice command, sending notifications to the smartphones of people nearby and other design “clues” to help people spot smart glasses.

The group of privacy regulators said that not only should users of smart glasses respect other people’s privacy but that the devices’ manufacturers and people providing connected apps or services may also be responsible for making sure they comply with privacy rules.

The GDPR applies to companies and organizations, and doesn’t apply when people process personal data in a household context. The regulators said this household exemption should be “narrowly interpreted” when it comes to smart glasses, and would not apply when someone shares photos or videos of others “to an indefinite number of persons on a public social media account.”

Tech firms like Meta have pitched their smart glasses to consumers on the basis that they are sleek and discreet. Meta has included an LED light in its smart glasses, which activates while recording, which it has said is a key privacy safeguard.

Samsung and Google have also recently announced that they’re collaborating on a new line of “intelligent eyewear” set to launch later this year, and Apple is reportedly aiming to hit the market with its own smart glasses by the end of 2027. 

The regulators’ statement could now force smart glasses manufacturers to reassess whether and how they sell smart glasses to European consumers. The EDPB called for industry-wide standards to be developed to make sure people are able to spot smart glasses and understand how they process data.

The European group of privacy regulators also commissioned a study into the social acceptability of smart glasses, published today.