Reports that Frank Hester donated an additional but as yet undeclared £5m to the Conservative party on top of the £10m already known about catapult him into the number one position in the league table of Tory donors.
In the last quarter of 2023, the Conservatives received £9.8m and Labour £6m in donations, according to the Electoral Commission. In total, political parties accepted donations of more than £93m last year, compared with £52m in 2022.
Apart from Hester, who are the Conservatives’ biggest donors over recent years?
John Sainsbury
A member of the Sainsbury dynasty, Lord Sainsbury left the Tories £10.85m in his will when he died in January 2022 at the age of 94. This was on top of smaller sums of between £50,000 and £500,000 donated as far back as 2007. The Sainsbury family’s wealth came from the eponymous supermarket chain, founded in 1869. Until the revelation about Hester’s additional donation, Sainsbury was the Tories’ biggest donor. His cousin, David, has donated millions to the Labour party.
Graham Edwards
The co-founder of a property investment company, TT Group, Edwards has donated £5.52m to the Conservatives since 2018 – £4m of which was given in 2023. In December 2022, Rishi Sunak appointed him Conservative party treasurer. Last year, the Mirror reported that Edwards was found to have used a tax avoidance scheme. A spokesperson for Edwards said at the time he had “paid all taxes properly and never received any penalty from HMRC”.
Mohamed Mansour
The Egyptian-born billionaire made a personal donation of £5m to the Tories last year, which was then its biggest one-off donation for more than 20 years. His company, Unatrac, previously gave more than £600,000 to the party. In 2022, the party appointed Mansour – who served in the Egyptian government under Hosni Mubarak, who was forced to leave office in the Arab spring of 2011 – to a senior fundraising role.
Bamford brothers
Anthony Bamford, a Tory peer, and his brother, Mark, the director of a subsidiary of the Conservative party, and their company, JCB, have given more than £10m to the Tories over the past 20 years. Lord Bamford helped pay for Boris Johnson’s wedding to Carrie Symonds in 2022. The brothers have recently been investigated by HMRC in a civil investigation over a network of offshore tax havens and companies.
Christopher Wood
Wood is the founder of Medannex, a biopharmaceutical company that develops cancer and autoimmune disease treatments. Its website describes Wood as a “serial entrepreneur who has founded and managed a number of successful biotechnology companies”. He gave £1.24m to the Conservative party in 2023.
Richard Harpin
Harpin, the founder and CEO of the home repairs business Homeserve, donated £765,000 to the Tories last year, bringing his total donations since 2008 to £2.74m. The Sunday Times Rich List placed him as the UK’s 254th richest person in 2023, with a worth of £630m. In 2015, Homeserve was fined £30m by the Financial Conduct Authority for mis-selling insurance and mishandling complaints.
Amit Lohia
In March last year, Lohia made his first and only donation to the Conservatives with the sum of £2m. Nicknamed the “Prince of polyester”, Lohia is vice-chairman of the textile giant Indorama Corporation, based in Singapore and founded by his father and grandfather almost 50 years ago. The donation was made in a personal capacity.
