Labour says Johnson lied as Tories fined over Downing Street flat donations

Labour has criticised “Boris Johnson’s sleaze” and accused the Prime Minister of lying after it was announced the Conservative Party will be fined for failing to declare donations for the Downing Street flat refurbishment.

The Electoral Commission today released the findings of its investigation into works at 11 Downing Street and whether transactions were recorded and reported as required. It found that £52,801.72 of a £67,801.72 donation was not declared.

The regulator concluded that there were “serious failings in the party’s compliance systems” as “the payment was incorrectly described in internal records and the full value of the donation was not correctly identified and reported”.

The Conservative Party has been fined £16,250 by the Commission for failing to accurately report the full value of the donation from Huntswood Associates and £1,550 for failing to keep proper accounting records.

Huntswood Associates is a company controlled by Tory peer Lord Brownlow, a former vice-chair of the party and regular donor. The Electoral Commission report revealed that Boris Johnson personally messaged him to ask for money.

The report says the Prime Minister WhatsApped Lord Brownlow on November 29th last year “asking him to authorise further, at that stage unspecified, refurbishment works”, the peer agreed to do so and confirmed he had on December 6th.

This appears to contradict what Johnson told Lord Geidt, the Prime Minister’s independent adviser on ministers’ interests, who reported in May that Johnson claimed not to know about the payments until February 2021.

Responding to the Conservative Party being fined, Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader and Shadow Chancellor to the Duchy of Lancaster, said: “Boris Johnson’s sleaze is corroding the office of Prime Minister.

“The Paterson scandal, illicit Christmas parties in Number 10 and now dodgy payments from a multimillionaire Conservative Party donor to fund his luxury Downing Street refurb. It is one rule for them, and one rule for the rest of us, and Boris Johnson is at the heart of it.

“It is right that the Electoral Commission has fined the Conservative Party but the Prime Minister must now explain why he lied to the British public saying he didn’t know who was behind No11 flat refurb – all the while he was WhatsApping the donor asking for more money.

“Boris Johnson has taken the British public for fools. He’s not only broken the law but made a mockery of the standards we expect from our Prime Ministers.”

Lord Geidt published a report in May concluding that Johnson did not breach the ministerial code and there no conflict of interest, or reasonably perceived conflict. He only said it was “unwise” behaviour from the Prime Minister.

But the information with which Lord Geidt was presented in order to come to that conclusion may have been false, as it seems the Prime Minister could have been aware of how the refurbishment was being funded.

“Our investigation into the Conservative Party found that the laws around the reporting and recording of donations were not followed,” Louise Edwards, director of regulation at the Electoral Commission, said.

“As a large and well-resourced political party that employs compliance and finance experts, and that has substantial sums of money going through its accounts, the Conservative Party should have sufficiently robust systems in place to meet its legal reporting requirements.”

Update, 1pm: No 10 has claimed that the Prime Minister was aware that Lord Brownlow was organising the money for the refurbishment, but that he was no aware the money was coming from Lord Brownlow himself.

“He knew he was running the trust and running it as a blind trust,” the Prime Minister’s spokesman said. The spokesman told journalists that the Prime Minister did not lie to the British public, nor to Lord Geidt, who will stay in post.