A Telegraph analysis reveals that Labour Cabinet ministers have accepted over £800,000 in donations and gifts so far this year. Here’s an excerpt:
David Lammy, the Foreign Secetary, has received the most since the beginning of 2024, having accepted more than £150,000 worth. This included £2,500 worth of tickets to see Tottenham Hotspur, with the use of a hospitality box.
The largest sum donated to him was from Labour Together, a Starmerite think tank, which donated £40,440 for the “provision of research and writing services”.
Labour Cabinet ministers have accepted £753,017 in donations and £90,853 in gifts since the beginning of the year, according to the analysis of the members’ register of interests.
Mr. Lammy is followed by Wes Streeting, who received £117,000 in donations and gifts, among them four tickets and hospitality to see Taylor Swift at Wembley costing £1,160.
The Health Secretary’s biggest donation was valued at £48,000 in four instalments from OPD Group Ltd, a company controlled by Peter Hearn, a recruitment mogul and one of Labour’s biggest donors.
He also accepted £13,000 “towards staffing costs” while Labour was in opposition, declared in April, from Kevin Craig, a businessman who later stood to become the Labour MP in Suffolk Coastal.
Mr. Craig was later forced to stand down after it emerged he placed a bet on his constituency outcome in the General Election, betting that the Tories would win. Mr. Streeting returned his donation from Mr. Craig.
Among Angela Rayner’s £104,000 in gifts and donations since the start of the year was £2,230 for clothing from ME+EM, a British luxury fashion brand.
Donations and gifts to politicians have come under renewed scrutiny in recent weeks after Sir Keir Starmer became embroiled in a row over funding clothes donated to him and his wife by Lord Alli.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The Mail reveals that Bridget Phillipson squirmed while defending her £14,000 birthday bash funded by a millionaire Labour peer during a grilling on Sky News’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips.
Stop Press 2: Angela Rayner is facing fresh questions over a freebie holiday to New York paid for by a Labour donor, according to the Mail.
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