Andy McSmith's Diary: The scandal of the very secret society that funds the Tories

More than £215,000 of the vast sums that the Conservative Party poured into marginal seats in the run-up to the general election came from the mysterious United and Cecil Club. In the Register of Members’ Interests, 51 Tory MPs declared donations to their constituency parties from the club, ranging from £1,000 to £10,000, in the first three months of this year.

Most beneficiaries are new MPs, though there are a few who won their seats in 2010 by narrow margins. The three whose parties received £10,000 each were sitting MPs Kris Hopkins and David Morris and Ben Howlett, who took Bath from the Lib Dems.

United and Cecil is a members’ association with only one known purpose – to collect and disburse donations to the Conservative Party. On the Election Commission registry, its address is given as a £2m private house near Slough. Most of the MPs who have benefited from it give its address as a stables near Windsor, run by Tim Lord, former chief executive of the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association. A few give its address as Munslows, an accountants’ firm in High Holborn, London, and one entry suggests it is based in the same building as the Carlton Club, a short walk from Parliament.

United and Cecil has no contact details and its membership list is not public. It does not need to declare its sources of money as it comes in individual donations below £7,500. Given the clamour the Tories raise about Labour’s union donations, you might think they would have qualms about being funded by a secretive organisation, but apparently not.

Conservatives in the money

Meanwhile, it is customary to look through the Register for MPs who are making vast amounts of money outside Parliament, such as the Tory MPs Stephen Phillips and Geoffrey Cox, who are also high-earning barristers, and Boris Johnson. A comparatively new entrant to this club is Nadine Dorries, whose sideline as a fiction writer brought in more than £100,000 in 12 months.

BBC’s belated apology

The BBC needs to tread carefully in its dealings with the Tories, with a decision pending on the licence fee and charter renewal. That may be part of the explanation for a graceful apology received by the former Conservative chairman, Grant Shapps.

His complaint was that the BBC got very excited about a story that an anonymous Wikipedia contributor had been barred from contributing to the site after making flattering additions to Shapps’s entry. It was implied, but never substantiated, that Shapps or someone he knew was doctoring Wikipedia.

The BBC was not so interested when the story turned out to be flakey, and the culprit was exposed as Lib Dem activist. James Harding, the BBC’s director of news, has written to Shapps, admitting that the BBC did not give the later development enough coverage. “I’m sorry we didn’t do as much as I would have liked,” he wrote.

The Rock displays its might

Gibraltar may be small, but it does not lack ambition. It has a Supreme Court, which has ordered a right-wing Spanish union called Manos Limpias (“Clean Hands”) to pay £30,000 damages plus £35,000 costs for libelling the Rock’s Chief Minister Fabian Picardo, whom they accused of smuggling, drug-trafficking and money-laundering.

But Manos Limpias’s boss, Miguel Bernard Remon – a defender of those who held high office when Spain was under fascist rule – has told the site Spain Report: “I don’t recognise his authority, the sovereignty of the Gibraltar government or that bogus court.” I can’t see this being resolved amicably.