- author, Daniel Wainwright
- role, Data journalist
The Labour Party declared more donations during the general election campaign than all other political parties combined, receiving a total of more than £9.5 million.
The Conservatives raised just under £1.9 million, according to the election monitoring group’s final total, less than a tenth of the amount they raised in the 2019 general election, when the party declared more than £19 million.
The Conservative Party’s largest source of donations was the Lottery, which raised a total of £225,000 during the election. Labour’s largest donor was Sir David Sainsbury, who gave the party £2.5 million.
The figures cover donations from May 30, when Parliament adjourned, through the election on July 4.
Lord Sainsbury, the former chairman of the Sainsbury supermarket chain, was the campaign’s biggest donor.
He was previously Secretary of State for Science and Innovation in Tony Blair’s government.
Labour’s total donations amount to more than £8 million, coming from 10 sources, including two trade unions, former Autoglass boss Gary Rubner, hedge fund managers Martin Taylor and Stuart Roden, sculptor Antony Gormley, production company Toledo Productions, tech investor Danny Roode Thompson and former professional poker player Derek Webb, who founded the Campaign for Fairer Gambling.
The National Conservative Lottery Association, a weekly lottery licensed by the Gambling Commission, donated a total of £225,000 to the Conservative Party during the election, the largest amount ever declared by the Conservative Party from a single source, according to an analysis of Electoral Commission data.
The Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats also run their own lotteries.
The Liberal Democrats’ biggest donor in the campaign was Adam Management Holdings, a management consultancy and property company run by Safwan Adam, which gave around £480,000 to the Liberal Democrats and also £20,000 to the Green Party.
Reform UK’s biggest donor was Britain Means Business, a company on whose directorship deputy leader Richard Tice is. The company, run by the new MP for Boston-Skegness, donated a total of £500,000 to the party during the election campaign.
The Labour Party received significantly less funding from trade unions compared to the 2015, 2017 and 2019 elections.
In 2019 the party pledged £5 million from trade unions, rising to £2.4 million in 2024, of which £1.49 million will come from public sector trade union Unison and the rest from six other unions.
The data included more than 130 donors, ranging from individuals to corporations to unions.
Political parties were required to submit weekly reports of any donations or loans they received above £11,180 between 30 May 2024 and the polling day.
At the last general election the threshold was £7,500 but it was increased in January 2024.
