A FORMER Tory Scottish Secretary accepted a £5000 donation from a “dark money” group, the MPs register of interests has revealed.
David Mundell, the MP for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweedale, accepted the donation from the Scottish Unionist Association Trust (SUAT) in July this year.
The Tory MP declared this as a “donation to help with a survey project”.
The SNP said it was “high time” the Tories came clean on where the funding for SUAT comes from.
Mundell served as Scottish Secretary between 2015 and 2019, under prime ministers David Cameron and Theresa May. He has served as an MP since 2005.
SUAT was fined in 2019 by the Electoral Commission for not reporting donations to the Conservative Party properly.
An investigation by the Ferret previously found that SUAT donated £318,876 to the Tories between April 2001 and February 2018.
It also funded the salary for Mundell’s campaign managers ahead of the 2015 and 2017 general elections, according to The Herald.
In 2021, SUAT donated £95,123 to the Tories in 2021, according to Electoral Commission records.
On the recent donation to Mundell, SNP MP Pete Wishart said: “It shows just how desperate the Tories are that they are still accepting donations from this shadowy group which has previously been sanctioned by the Electoral Commission for failing to report donations properly.
“Mysteriously this group is registered to the same address as the Glasgow Conservative and Unionist Association.
“It’s high time that the Tories came clean on its links with this murky organisation and where its funding originates from.
“All politicians have an obligation to check where donations have come from. This has never been more important with the increased threat of political interference from bad actors.”
The Scottish Tories have been contacted for comment.
In 2018, some details about the trust were revealed after pressure grew following the Ferret investigation and former SNP MP Ian Blackford raised the trust's donations at PMQs with May.
SUAT, in a statement issued through the PR company of trustee and former Tory MP Peter Duncan, said the trust was formed in 1968 from “assets of the (then) Scottish Unionist Association, primarily sales of property assets.”
Mundell claimed last year in the House of Commons that the Scottish Government has “systematically deprived funding from areas that do not support independence”.
Ivan McKee, then-public finance minister, branded Mundell’s claims “total nonsense and completely false”.
