Revealed: Corporate donations to British politics have tripled

Influential Labour committee chairs call on government to clean up politics as our new analysis finds record £42 million in company donations ahead of last election

Corporate donations to British politics tripled over the last three general elections, new analysis by Democracy for Sale shows.

Our findings have prompted the Labour chairs of three influential parliamentary committees to call on the government to use the upcoming Elections Bill to tighten the rules on political donations and protect British democracy from big money and foreign interference.

In the twelve months leading up to Keir Starmer’s 2024 election victory, companies gave £42 million to political parties and politicians, according to Electoral Commission data. That is almost double the previous record of £21.5 million ahead of Boris Johnson’s 2019 win, and three times the £14 million donated before the 2017 election.

But this surge in ‘corporate’ money is not a story about big business backing political parties.

Almost none of the funding came from Britain’s major listed companies or FTSE 500 firms. Instead, it was driven by companies controlled by super-wealthy individuals, small and opaque firms that file minimal financial information, and businesses ultimately owned by foreign nationals who could not legally donate in their own name.

As well as a tripling in corporate donations during the last three election years, we found that:

• Just five companies gave over £27m to Labour and the Conservatives in the year before the 2024 election.
  

• Labour took £13.3m from companies in the 12 months to the July 2024 election, exceeding trade union donations (£10.6m) for the first time in the party’s history.
  

• Small and opaque firms with little visible trading activity are increasingly being used as donors.
  

• Companies owned by foreign nationals have donated millions, exploiting loopholes that bar foreign individuals but allow foreign-owned UK companies to contribute.

Labour MP Matt Western, chair of Parliament’s Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, said the sharp rise in corporate funding “raised serious questions about undue influence from wealthy donors” and called for the government to tighten political finance rules.

“The Government must seize the opportunity offered by the upcoming Elections Bill to protect the integrity of our system, but this must also come with serious upgrades to specialist capabilities at the Electoral Commission and law enforcement agencies,” he said.

Debates over company donations are not new. When election finance transparency laws were drawn up in the late 1990s, the Committee on Standards in Public Life advised that companies should have shareholder approval before making political donations.

In practice, however, large firms have rarely donated. Instead, the bulk of so-called corporate donations have long come from companies controlled by a single very wealthy individual.

Ahead of the 2024 general election, the Conservatives received £15 million from the Phoenix Partnership, wholly owned by Frank Hester. Since 2016, the company has earned £591 million from public contracts, according to procurement analysts Tussell.

The Tories also received £1.25 million from Access Industries (UK) Ltd, ultimately owned by billionaire Len Blavatnik, as well as large sums via companies owned by Lords Michael Spencer and Joseph Bamford.

Labour took £13.3 million in corporate donations in the year before its election victory - more than it received from all trade unions combined.

Its largest company donations included £4.7 million from green energy tycoon Dale Vince via Ecotricity, and £4 million from Quadrature Capital, whose parent company is based in the Cayman Islands.

Starmerite think tank Labour Together gave £1.45 million to the party and £280,000 to 23 MPs. As we have reported on extensively in recent days, Labour Together was previously fined by the Electoral Commission for failing to properly declare £730,000 in donations that paved Keir Starmer’s path to power.

The Liberal Democrats corporate donations have also jumped in recent years. Ed Davey’s party declared £2.6 million in the 12 months prior to the 2024 general election, more than triple their 2019 takings from companies.

£740,000 of the Lib Dems 2024 corporate income came from one company, ADAM MANAGEMENT HOLDING, which is controlled by Safvan Adam. According the Mirror, Adam is a former boxer and the boss of hotel firm that made millions providing accommodation to asylum seekers.

Reform UK, meanwhile, has been heavily reliant on Richard Tice’s company Tisun Investments Ltd, which has given the party more than £1.4 million since 2020.

For donors, using companies can soften the optics of large personal donations. Rather than a wealthy individual appearing in official disclosures, a little-known firm - often with a limited public footprint - attracts far less attention.

“Often company donations are little more than a convenient way for wealthy individuals to make campaign contributions, which can buy political privileged access, influence and honours in Westminster,” explained Steve Goodrich, head of research at Transparency International UK.

“The government’s Elections Bill is not only an opportunity to shine a light on dark money, but to stop the sale of our democracy to the highest bidder.”

Not all company donations can be easily traced back to a wealthy individual. In recent years there has been a sharp rise in donations from small and obscure firms, which are not required to file audited accounts or detailed profit and loss statements, making it difficult to establish where the money for political donations originated.

Reform UK last year received £200,000 from a tiny UK firm run by a churchwarden in Potters Bar who has worked for an Iranian-Kazakh billionaire who recently bankrolled Nigel Farage’s trip to Davos.

Interior Architecture Landscape Limited had declared only meagre cash reserves and listed tax debts totalling more than its political contributions. A spokesperson for the firm has said that no third party was involved in the donation.

In 2024, then Tory leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick accepted a £5,000 donation from a dormant company as well as £75,000 from a company with no employees, carrying debt and apparently funded by a loan from the British Virgin Islands.

Companies can also be used by donors who would otherwise be impermissible. Last year, Democracy for Sale revealed that more £6m was donated to UK parties by companies owned by foreign nationals, despite their ultimate owners being unable to vote in UK elections.

One example involves Calvin Ayre, a gambling and crypto entrepreneur based in Antigua. In July 2023, a UK company he owns, nChainUK, donated £70,000 to the Conservatives despite posting losses for three consecutive years. (Ayre’s lawyer told us he had “no knowledge” of the donation, and stressed that Ayre has never been a director of the company.)

Another is Aquind, which has donated almost £250,000 to the Conservatives and is ultimately owned by Viktor Fedotov, a Russian-born tycoon. The company has consistently reported losses as it seeks to develop an undersea cable between Britain and France.

In late 2024, reports suggested that Elon Musk was considering donating $100 million to Reform through X’s UK subsidiary - a move that would be perfectly legal under current rules.

With ministers preparing to unveil a new Elections Bill immensely, leading Labour MPs argue the government must seize the opportunity to clean up British politics.

Labour MP and business committee chair Liam Byrne said our findings were “fresh evidence of just how the plague of dark money is spreading through our political life”.

“When shell companies are created to hide the true donors of political donations the public is denied all knowledge of just who is buying what influence,” Byrne said. “We can’t go on like this. If we want cleaner politics we have to use the new elections bill to shut down this shell game and end donation laundering for good.”

Emily Thornberry, chair of the foreign affairs committee, said new rules were needed to ensure companies could only donate from published profits.

“We need to be able to see where the profits behind these donations are,” she told Democracy for Sale. “Otherwise how can the public know where the money is really coming from?”

Labour MP and chair of the anticorruption all party parliamentary group Phil Brickell said: “The government’s forthcoming elections bill is a huge opportunity to put an end to the corrosive impact of dodgy donations in our politics.”

“This government promised to restore trust in our politics as a force for good,” Brickell added. “That means closing down any loophole which allows dirty or impermissible donations to flood into political parties.

Our findings come just a day after the UK fell to its lowest ever tanking in Transparency International’s global corruption index. The report’s authors cited the growing dominance of wealthy donors in British politics as among the reasons for the fall.