A BUSINESSMAN who made millions from a government contract was revealed yesterday to have donated £500,000 to Labour weeks after Tony Blair made him a peer.
Lord Drayson was named among a list of working peers on April 30, and six weeks later the Labour Party recorded a donation from him of £505,000.
The size of the gift, revealed in accounts published by the Electoral Commission, is contentious because of the timing of Lord Drayson’s previous donations to the party.
Lord Drayson’s former company, Powderject, was awarded the Government’s £32 million contract to supply smallpox vaccines after the September 11 attacks.
The decision was taken after Lord Drayson made two donations of £50,000 to the Labour Party. Later investigations by the National Audit Office and the Commons Public Accounts Committee both cleared all involved of acting with any impropriety.
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However, Henry Bellingham, the Shadow Industry Minister, said that the news of the latest donation from Lord Drayson was “pretty corrupt”.
“It’s typical of the system of Tony’s cronies and the public are sick and tired of it,” Mr Bellingham said. “Yes, there used to be a tradition of giving peerages to donors, but they had to have achieved a great deal in their own right.
“To describe Paul Drayson as a captain of industry is far from accurate. He is a young man in a hurry who made a lot of money and donated a lot to Labour,” he said.
“Now he has been made a member of Parliament for life in his early forties, and all because he donated half a million pounds,” he said.
Lord Drayson, who was out of the country yesterday, has since made £43 million out of selling his business and is expected to take on a role promoting science in the Lords.
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Two men made peers by the Conservative Party this year also made donations listed by the Electoral Commission around the time of their appointment. Sir Stanley Kalms, the president of Dixons Group, gave the Tory party £3,000 in April, four weeks before being made a peer, and he has given the party £502,000 since 2001. Leonard Steinberg, the founder of Stanley Leisure, gave £6,446 in May, three weeks after being promoted to the House of Lords, and has given £16,000 in the past three years.
Yesterday’s accounts showed a rise in the incomes of the two major parties in the second quarter of the year as they prepare for a general election. Labour pulled in £4.38 million in three months. The Tories fared worse, with £3.6 million in donations over the same period.