Brown's £30,000 gift 'unregistered'

Published on Monday 31 December 2007 20:45

THE Labour Party has failed to publicly register a £30,000 donation from Gordon Brown, it emerged last night.

The cash is understood to have been given by the Prime Minister's leadership campaign but has yet to be included in the Electoral Commission's register of gifts.

All Labour's deputy leadership candidates gave similar gifts but most were registered in time for the Commission's most recent accounts.

Tory spokesman Chris Grayling said it was further evidence of Labour's "shambolic" approach to party finances.

Metropolitan Police detectives are to interview key witnesses over allegations the law was broken when Labour failed to properly register more than 600,000 from businessman David Abrahams.

Mr Brown has vowed to give police all the help they require and has said several times he did not know third parties were funneling the property developer's money to Labour.

The party has also suffered a string of embarrassing revelations about donations given to its deputy leadership campaign candidates.

Under party rules, all candidates for both the deputy and the leadership had to give 15 per cent of their cash donations to Labour HQ.

Hazel Blears, Alan Johnson, Hilary Benn, Harriet Harman and Peter Hain have all declared the sums to the Electoral Commission in its most recent accounts.

The contests for leader and deputy leader were decided in June and almost all those involved handed over their required 15 per cent soon after.

Mr Brown raised 196,700 for his campaign, requiring him to give the party 29,505.

Party sources said they expected the donation would be registered by the time the Electoral Commission published its next accounts in February.