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Tories received £25m of donations for general election - twice as much as Labour

Electoral Commission figures shows record £40.1m donated to political parties ahead of vote 

Chloe Farand
Thursday 24 August 2017 17:02 BST
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Theresa May speaking outside No 10 following the general election results
Theresa May speaking outside No 10 following the general election results

The Conservative party received nearly £25m in donations ahead of this year's general election, more than twice as much as the Labour Party.

Figures published by the Electoral Commission show a record £40.1m was donated to political parties for the election on the 8 June.

The period between 1 April and 30 June saw an increase in £9.4m in reported donations compared to the previous quarterly record which coincided with the 2015 election.

A breakdown of the donations shows the Conservative Party received 1,180 donations with a total value of £24,902,297 while the Labour Party pocketed less than half of the amount with 681 donations worth £10,239,474.

Unions were the Labour Party's top four donors with Unite the Union donating more than £4m, the GMB giving £1,200,000, the Communication Workers Union (CWU) just over £1m and Unison a total of £922,000.

The Conservative Party received most of its money through individual donors but JCB Service, a company which manufacturers construction equipment, was the party's biggest donor with a donation of £1.5m.

John C Armitage, the co-founder of the hedge fund Egerton Capital, was the party's second biggest donor, contributing £1.1m. He also donated £65,000 to the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign.

Longtime Tory donor, John Griffin, the founder of the mini-cab company Addison Lee, also donated just over £1m to the Tories. He was previously embroiled in controversy over wether his donations to the party may have influenced the Government's policy over taxi regulation.

With a donation of £1m, John E Gore was the fourth biggest Tory donor.

The Liberal Democrats received a total of £4,891,943 from 456 donors in the months surrounding the election while the nine remaining parties received less than £1m.

The Women's Equality Party received nearly £283,000, the Green Party £176,363 and Ukip £156,455.

The value of outstanding loans to political parties increased by nearly £980,000 compared with the period from 1 January to 31 March, to reach a total of more than £4m.

Overall, the Liberal Democrats have more than £1m worth of outstanding loans, followed by the Conservatives with £838,347 and the Labour Party with £819,579.

The Electoral Commission said 12 parties failed to meet the deadline for reporting donations, included four donations respectively to the Liberal Democrats and Labour and three to the Conservative Party. Each case will be considered in respect to the Commission's enforcement policy.

Bob Posner, the Commission's Director of Political Finance and Regulation, said: “The snap general election prompted political parties to raise record-breaking sums in the second quarter of 2017.

"Voters can have confidence that, where parties fail to submit information by a statutory deadline and there is no reasonable explanation, we will take a robust approach in dealing with these breaches.”

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