Tories 'should have declared donations to front-bench'

Published on Thursday 15 May 2008 22:07

GEORGE Osborne, the shadow Chancellor, and his colleagues on the Conservatives' front-bench team, should have declared hundreds of pounds of donations, a Westminster watchdog said yesterday.

John Lyon, the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner said funding channelled to front-benchers through Conservative Central Office should be made public.

However, he concluded it would not be "fair and reasonable" to criticise Mr Osborne over the failure as the party chiefs had sought official advice on the issue and "acted in good faith" in interpreting it.

Mr Lyon said the incident was "a story of misunderstandings, of discussions held at cross purposes, of the misinterpretation of conversations and e-mails".

However, he added that all such donations should be published in future – and gave shadow cabinet members four weeks to correct their register entries.

A complaint was lodged against Mr Osborne by two Labour MPs after it emerged the Tories used almost 500,000 of funding to support Mr Osborne's office – at the specific request of donors – without it being reported in Register of Members' Interests.

One of the complainants, John Mann said: "The report shows there is a methodical system in place to hide donations.

"The shadow cabinet member asks for a donation, a donation goes to Conservative Central Office and they allocate it to same front-bench spokesman.

"The Tories are being dragged kicking and screaming into revealing their donors.

"What is really astonishing is that this has continued despite Cameron's promise of transparency.

"Every donation now must be revealed, including a breakdown of Short Money expenditure and the Parliamentary Research Unit expenditure."

Mr Osborne said: "I am pleased the Committee have cleared me of any wrongdoing in this matter.

"I maintained all along that I always followed the rules and advice as I understood it.

"I am glad the rules have now been clarified and I will, of course, continue to adhere to them."