Just Stop Oil backer who donated to Labour during Covid urged to repay taxpayers' furlough cash

A financial backer of Just Stop Oil who used his company to donate to the Labour Party during the pandemic has been urged to repay £300,000 it received from the furlough scheme.

Dale Vince used his company, Ecotricity, to donate £770,000 to Labour during the coronavirus pandemic, including £10,000 paid directly to Angela Rayner.

In the same period, the company was paid £309,000 in taxpayer-funded grants from the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, which was designed to keep struggling businesses afloat.

Mr Vince has been urged to repay the money he claimed between 2020 and 2022, as Government sources argue he cannot have needed the support payments if he had spare money to donate to political causes.

“The point of furlough was to help keep people in work, not allow companies to make donations to Labour,” a Treasury source told The Telegraph.

“It is obvious Dale Vince’s company didn’t need the support, so he should voluntarily repay the money. Sir Keir Starmer should also ask himself whether this was an appropriate use of furlough funds, and hand the donation back.”

Mr Vince, 61, is a successful energy entrepreneur and chairman of the Forest Green Rovers football club.

He uses Ecotricity to support a range of “companies and organisations that share our values,” according to the company’s latest annual report.

The organisations include the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and The Vegan Society.

Last year, Mr Vince said he had donated “around £10,000” to Just Stop Oil, the protest group that has brought roads and sporting events to a standstill, when it was being set up in February 2022.

“I support their aims and I don’t really have a problem with what they’re doing, as long as it’s non-violent protests,” he told a podcast.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, joined calls for Mr Vince to return the money his company was paid during the pandemic.

He said: “Covid support payments were intended to help companies survive. They were not meant to be a covert way of funding political parties. Ecotricity should repay taxpayers urgently and fund its politicking out of its own pocket.”

MPs on the Public Accounts Committee have previously complained that the Treasury did not check thoroughly enough that firms claiming money from the furlough scheme really needed it.

Dame Meg Hillier, the Labour chairman of the committee, said that while “money that genuinely saved jobs and households was got out admirably quickly…too many companies claimed that should not have, and now won’t give it back.”

It is unknown whether Mr Vince used Ecotricity to donate to Just Stop Oil or paid them personally.

Neither the protest group nor the Labour Party feature on the company’s online list of “partners,” although filings to the Electoral Commission reveal it paid £1.5m to Labour between 2015 and 2022.

Greg Hands, the Conservative Party chairman, has called for Labour to return the donations in light of Mr Vince’s connection to Just Stop Oil.

“I am concerned about the influence of this money given the Labour Party’s decision to vote against tougher measures to stop disruption via the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act,” he wrote in a letter to Annaliese Dodds, the party’s chairman.

“I note the Labour Party has already caved into the demands made by the group and announced a halt to new oil, gas and coal projects.”

In recent weeks Just Stop Oil has disrupted the World Snooker Championship and Chelsea Flower show, and performed “slow walking” protests on main roads to cause traffic jams.

In a statement to The Telegraph, Mr Vince said: “Like hundreds of thousands of other British businesses, we used the Government’s furlough scheme during successive lockdowns, for its purpose - to maintain jobs and ensure we stayed in business.  It’s one of the few things this government got right in the pandemic.

“We have given money to Labour for many years, we did so before the furlough scheme and after it - and we will do so again.  I firmly believe only Labour can sort out the mess that successive Tory governments have caused to our country and economy.”

Mr Vince added that his donations were “absolutely transparent” and that calls for them to be returned by Labour were “naked politics” with “no moral or legal basis”.

Labour declined to comment.