Conservatives raise £1.6m in second week of election campaign

The Conservatives have raised more than £1.6m during the second week of the general election campaign, more than doubling the combined donations to all the other political parties over the same period, figures show.

Donors to Theresa May’s party include a firm controlled by the founders of Betfred, the bookmakers, and Doug Ellis, the former chairman of Aston Villa football club.

Details are contained within the latest release of Electoral Commission data unveiling the major donors to each political party in the week leading up to 16 May.

They show that Labour raised just under £383,000 while the Liberal Democrats brought in £160,000.

Ukip’s donations have slowed down, with the party being given just £35,000. The Women’s Equality party and the Green party raised less than £19,000 each.

Figures released on Tuesday showed the Tories received £5.46m from January to March this year, more than twice the £2.65m given to Labour.

The new data shows that the firm Rainy City Investments has given £100,000 to the Tories. The firm’s directors are Peter and Fred Done, the owners of Betfred, which has more than 1,300 betting shops across the UK.

The brothers, who are from Salford, bought the Tote in 2011 in a bid backed by the former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson.

Ellis, under his full name of Sir Herbert D Ellis, has donated £66,666 to the Tories this month. He received a knighthood under David Cameron’s government.

The Tories’ two biggest donations, each worth £150,000, came from Investors In Private Capital Ltd, and Andrew C Green, an investment adviser to equity funds.

Billionaires Simon and David Reuben are directors of Investors In Private Capital. The brothers made their fortune in Russian aluminium in the 1990s but have since established themselves as London-based property investors.

Michael Lewis, a fund manager and the former a former vice-president of the pro-Israel lobbying group Bicom, has given £100,000 to the Conservative campaign.

The Tories also received £100,000 from Lord John Sainsbury, the president of the supermarket chain, and £125,000 from Steven Parkin, a Leeds-based businessman.

Lubov Chernukhin, a banker who is a UK citizen, has given £12,500 to the Tories. Chernukhin’s husband, Vladimir, was Russia’s former deputy foreign minister during Vladimir Putin’s first term as Russian president. She has previously handed over more than £300,000 to the party or the offices of its MPs, records show.

Labour’s large donations over this period came almost exclusively from unions. Its most generous donation of £290,125 came from the moderate GMB union.

The Liberal Democrats received their biggest donation of the campaign so far of £100,000 from Mark Petterson, the director of a large wind farm.

Last week, it emerged that the Conservatives had raised £1.5m more than Labour in the first week of the general election campaign, receiving more than £4.1m while Labour raised just over £2.7m.