What's happened to donated cash?

Remember back in 2009 when a national newspaper broke the news about how MPs had been fiddling their expenses with dodgy dealings over houses in London and most notorious of them was a claim for £1,645 for a floating duck house at a Conservative MP’s constituency house? Well things were tightened up considerably after this scandal, leavened perhaps by a significant boost in MP’s basic pay, and a tendency for many MPs now to keep money in the family by paying their spouse as ‘part-time diary secretary’ and the like. A new list of MPs’ financial interests has just been published and it made interesting reading. One area attracted my attention and it was the matter of donations made to the candidates in the non-election to the Conservative party leadership, after the resignation of David Cameron. If you look at and believe what has been declared you will find that Stephen Crabb declared no donations; Liam Fox and Michael Gove declared relatively modest amounts. Strangely Andrea Leadsom who was in second place before the whole contest was called off, declared nothing. In fact her page in the register is completely empty of declarations of any kind which is quite unusual. However the victor in the non-election, Theresa May received a total of £275,000 as donations – over a quarter of a million pounds as she declared it ‘to support my campaign for leadership of the Conservative party’. Given that the campaign was rather a short non-event, and if Andrea Leadsom is to be believed she received nothing from anyone in support of her campaign, you really have to ask what has happened to that £275,000. Now donated to charity perhaps? Don’t miss out on all the latest breaking news where you live. Here are four ways you can be sure you’ll be amongst the first to know what’s going on. 1) Make our website your homepage at www.ryeandbattleobserver.co.uk/ 2) Like our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/RyeandBattleObserver 3) Follow us on Twitter @RyeObs 4) Register with us by clicking on ‘sign in’ (top right corner). You can then receive our daily newsletter AND add your point of view to stories that you read here. And do share with your family and friends - so they don’t miss out! The Rye and Battle Observer - always the first with your local news. Be part of it.