The Registration of Political Parties Act 1998 (c. 48), is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which made legal provision to set up a register of political parties in the United Kingdom.

It was planned to introduce some elements of list-based proportional representation in elections to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly and also to introduce full list-based proportional representation in European Parliament elections in England, Scotland and Wales and for that, political parties needed to have a stronger legal recognition.

[1] Additionally, various pieces of legislation needed to refer to parties and so were using ad hoc definitions, which might have been incompatible.

In practice, the description used is either the name of a registered party or the word "Independent".

[6] As the act also permitted logos on ballot papers, the act also introduced a similar register for emblems,[6] which had the result that the Communist Party of Britain is the only party in the United Kingdom permitted to use the hammer and sickle as its ballot-paper logo, although they usually use the hammer and dove variant.