MPs pocket over £9m in gifts and donations during election

MPs received more than £9 million in donations and benefits during the 2024 general election, nearly double the £4.3 million they registered in the 2019 election. The Westminster Accounts, Tortoise’s fully searchable database tracking the money flowing into British politics, has been updated for the new parliament, revealing that the bulk of donations, £4.9 million, went to 323 Labour candidates from a mixture of wealthy individuals, unions and internal party groups like Labour Together. £2.5 million went to 66 Liberal Democrat MPs, and just £975,000 to Conservative MPs. In the months since the election, Conservative leadership candidates have been registering the biggest sums, with a total of £785,000 received between them. The Westminster Accounts will continue to be updated throughout the current parliament.

Data from the register broadly reveals two distinct groups of donors to Labour. On one hand, the party’s traditional union backers gave £1.7 million. On the other, Labour Together, described as Labour’s ‘first SuperPAC’, plus a handful of wealthy individuals linked to the party leadership, including Auto Glass business magnate Gary Lubner, donated £1.5 million,

Looking at who they gave to gives a picture of the factional and ideological makeup of the parliamentary Labour party. Labour Together and its supporters focused almost exclusively on new candidates, including several new MPs close to the leadership who were appointed as junior ministers, like Georgia Gould and Sarah Sackman.

In contrast, the unions donated more to incumbent MPs generally on the left of the party. Unite and the RMT were the most “factional” donors (neither donated to the central Labour party in the election) and there was very little overlap between MPs they supported and those backed by Labour Together. Seven of the MPs they supported have since lost the whip over the two-child benefit cap.