Labour had a record quarter for funding, receiving more than £10.4m, showing the party is outgunning the Conservatives financially in the run-up to the next election. The party’s coffers were boosted by a £3m donation from David Sainsbury, the supermarket baron, as well as £2.2m from Gary Lubner, who made hundreds of millions of pounds running the company behind Autoglass. Sainsbury withdrew his backing for the party during the Jeremy Corbyn era and in 2019 gave £8m to the Liberal Democrats, but returned to supporting Labour last year. The former Labour MP Fiona Mactaggart contributed £250,0000 to the party’s campaign funds. Labour also received £2.7m in public funding and donations from trade unions, with £290,125 from the GMB and £215,740 from Usdaw, the shopworkers’ union. Other major donations included £50,000 from Grant Mansfield, founder of a TV production company Plimsoll, and £50,000 from the businessman Gareth Quarry, who switched his support from the Tories to Labour last year. The Conservatives were close behind with donations of about £10m, largely from private individuals. They accepted a £5m donation from Frank Hester, the founder and chief executive of the Phoenix Partnership, a healthcare software company, as well as £1m from the billionaire hedge fund manager Alan Howard. A £350,000 sum was given by a company owned by Sandy Chadha, the chief executive and shareholder in the Supreme Group, with interests in the vaping, e-cigarette and wellness market. Bassim Haidar, a telecoms billionaire, gave a total of £286,300 in several tranches. The Conservatives have raised £22m so far this year, while Labour has brought in around £16m. Donations to the Conservative party fell to £7.5m in the second half of last year amid Tory turmoil, contributing to an overall loss for 2022. The Liberal Democrats raised about £2m, including a £25,000 donation from their former leader, Nick Clegg, while the Scottish National party reported £360,000 in contributions. The donations to all parties, reported to the Electoral Commission for the second quarter of the year, totalled more than £24m, showing the parties are boosting their war chests in before the next election.
The multimillion pound sums being given with probably a year to go before the next general election suggest record funding for political parties in the next year. The highest previous record year was 2019, when £113m was contributed. Donations tend to increase in the last quarter before an election, with the three months before the 2019 election showing £70m donated to the big parties in a short period. A Labour spokesperson said: “Thanks to Keir Starmer’s leadership, the Labour party saw significant financial growth throughout 2022, and our finances have gone from strength to strength this year as we set out our five missions to transform Britain. The Labour party is a changed party that is serious about getting into government and building a better Britain.” Louise Edwards, the Electoral Commission’s director of regulation and digital transformation, said the data was an important part of transparency but advised the government to go further. “We’ve seen for some time that public confidence in the transparency of party and campaigner finance is declining. We continue to recommend to the UK government that it introduces laws to help protect parties from those who seek to evade the law and give voters more confidence in the process,” she said. A Conservative party spokesperson said: “We’ve had a very strong start to 2023 with £22m in donations for first half of the year.”