Parties get £8m in donations in three months...

Tuesday, May 22, 2012
12:55 PM

There were some interesting items on a list released by the Electoral Commission today showing 500-odd donations that went to political parties between January 1 and March 31.

The three main political parties accepted around £8m in donations: Conservatives received £4m, Labour received £3.5m and the Lib Dems, just over £600,000.

But within that party-loving Lib Dems got a string of donations from the Ministry of Sound, which runs the London club of the same name; £42,500, £3,578, £15,000, £20,596, £15,703.

Meanwhile the Tories got £25,000 from both gambling company A and S Leisure and from Selfridges and £70,000 from Staffordshire based JCB.

They also got over £205,000 from the disgraced former party co-treasurer Peter Cruddas, who stepped down after getting embroiled in the ‘cash for access’ scandal.

The vast majority of Labour’s donations came from unions. No surprise there. The government of Jordan gave £2,118 to David Miliband, meanwhile the Electoral Commission itself appeared to give £114,153 to the Lib Dems.

6 comments

@BG.Now we know what the cash is for thanks to Owen Jones in The Independent.David Cameron,Jeremy Hunt and a few others have engaged lawyers to advise them regarding their Leveson Inquiry appearances.The kind of legal assistance they are requiring does not come cheap.No minimum wage or even living wage for the top end of the legal profession!

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Peter Watson

Monday, May 28, 2012
if the electoral commission had been doing their job properly at the last election the labour party would have been in court for vote rigging

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milecross

Wednesday, May 23, 2012
@ Peter - not quite true. Anyone earning over a million would pay 16K less. Millionaires per se would not. You can have assets that make you a millionaire but you do not pay income tax on assets only on income. Mr Cruddas` donation may not suit everyone but then again he has not been able to elect the leader of the tories nor has he been able to dictate which policies the tories are to follow. Unlike Labour who are totally dependent on union funding and consequently dance to their tune.

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BG

Wednesday, May 23, 2012
The electoral commission should not be supporting any political party, but then, they are dependent on the coalition to keep them alive in these hard times. All these corrupting influences could be dispensed with by choosing our representatives at random. Selection would ensure an end to the corruption these main parties have inflicted on tax payers. It would take thinking voters to make it happen though and the millionares who received an extra bonus from Osbornes budget could not use their money to buy influences anymore.

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ingo wagenknecht

Wednesday, May 23, 2012
At the same time as George Osborne gives away £16,000 to every millionaire in the UK in his Budget,the Tory Party gets some of the money straight back in Cruddas's donations which incredibly The Telegraph reports was in cash.Ed Miliband's proposal for a £5,000 cap,which would cost Labour dear in an election year,ought to be taken more seriously in the negotiations on Party funding.Currently large donations like Cruddas' look very sleazy.

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Peter Watson

Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Hi Joseph. Have I read the tables right? Did Labour get the lions share, some 640K out of a total of £825K for all parties (including Labour) from the public purse. This seems rather unfair to me on the other political parties.

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BG

Tuesday, May 22, 2012