More Labour Sleaze

I don't know why Labour want legislation to facilitate State (i.e. taxpayer) funding of political parties. They seem to be doing quite nicely as it is.

“Taxpayers’ money has been recycled into the coffers of the Labour party through a children’s charity,” said Nick Hurd, shadow charities minister. “It is very disappointing that the truth is having to be dragged out of the charity and the government bit by bit.”

Labour has already returned £15,000 to the charity. It said this weekend that it was “in the process” of returning the rest of the charity cash.

Catz Club , which has received £200,000 of lottery funding and a £1.3m loan from a Cabinet Office fund, first handed Labour £15,000 in the summer of 2007 for a “platinum” table at the Wembley function. A large chunk of its government loan was written off in March 2008.

Last year it again paid Labour £15,000 for the party’s sports dinner at Wembley. The charity has told the Charity Commission that it paid to attend the event to “lobby” politicians for funding for after-school childcare facilities. Out of total payments of £30,000, only £7,500 was declared by Labour as a donation.

One of the former trustees of the charity is Margaret McDonagh, a former general secretary of the Labour party, who stepped down from Catz Club in April 2006. Amanda Delew, who helped Lord Levy to raise funds for Labour, worked as a consultant for the charity until May last year.

The Charity Commission has now launched an investigation into the charity. It has already published a critical report on the second dinner in 2008. But it discovered only recently that the other dinner donation had been made in 2007. Both Catz Club and the Labour party had failed to disclose the payment.

Catz Club, which operates as Schoolfriendetc, was registered with the Charity Commission in 2004 and runs about 100 breakfast, after-school and holiday clubs catering for about 25,000 children.

As I said a long time ago :

You don't think the student union guys who made these state-funded parties possible were going to stop when they went into politics or local government and got access to some real money, do you ? One of the things I really wish Civitas would devote a researcher to for a few months is the enormous taxpayer subsidy to the cultural Left. You could start with the Guardian and BBC.

Charities are a favourite way of laundering taxpayer money to the Left.