MPs have been accused of failing to provide “sufficient” transparency after a Sky News investigation struggled to uncover basic details about who is behind major donations.
Among the top donors to individual politicians are companies where little detail was provided in the MPs’ declarations about who they are, who is in charge and where they are based.
When asked for comment, some of the MPs concerned were reluctant to discuss the details.
In one case, Sky News discovered that nobody had heard of a company donating hundreds of thousands to Labour MPs when we went to its registered address, while the office of another company that donates to 24 Tory MPs was shut and apparently out of action.
Responding, the director of the Institute for Government, Hannah White, told Sky News that MPs should be prepared to answer questions about the donations they accept
It follows an investigation as part of the Westminster Accounts that examines two companies ranked in the top 20 list of donors to individual MPs, where the declared donations provide the public with little information as to the true source of the money.
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MPM Connect Ltd is the third biggest donor to MPs since the last general election. The only organisations that have given more to individual politicians in that period are the trade union giants Unite and GMB.
However, the company has no staff, no website, and is registered at an office where the secretary says she has never heard of them.
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The £345,217 of donations that MPM Connect Ltd has made since the end of 2019 went to just three Labour politicians.
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper has received a total of £184,317, former mayor of South Yorkshire Dan Jarvis received £100,000 and shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has received £60,900.
Sky News asked each of the MPs to provide an explanation or comment in relation to who was behind the donations and why the money had been given to them.
How did the politicians respond?
Ms Cooper provided a statement which said it was not to be quoted, but her entry in the register of members’ interests states the funding is used to “support my offices”.
Mr Streeting said all the donations had been declared in the proper way, and his entry in the register of members’ interests says the money goes “towards staffing costs in my office”.
Mr Jarvis said all his donations support his work as an MP.
MPM Connect Ltd’s entry in the Companies House register lists two directors – recruitment mogul Peter Hearn and Simon Murphy, the entrepreneur behind the redevelopment of Battersea Power Station.
The company’s accounts do not disclose where it receives its funding, what it does, or why it donates so heavily.
When Sky News went to the office in Hertfordshire, where the company is registered, the receptionist in the building denied any knowledge of MPM Connect.
She told Sky News she did not recognise the names of the two directors.
“We’d rather not speak to you,” she said, before closing the door.
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‘You look confused…’
Mr Hearn and MPM Connect were approached for comment, but no response has so far been received.
Electoral Commission records show that over the past 20 years, Peter Hearn has made a number of significant donations to political parties. These have almost all been to the Labour Party, though he made a £10,000 donation to the Conservative campaign for the seat of Poplar and Limehouse ahead of the 2010 general election.
In 2015 he spent £100,000 on Ms Cooper’s unsuccessful campaign for the Labour leadership, and Rushanara Ali’s deputy leadership bid, before turning his attention to Mr Jarvis in a bid to dethrone Jeremy Corbyn and his deputy Tom Watson.
Mr Hearn and MPM Connect were approached for comment, but no response has so far been received.
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How you can explore the Westminster Accounts
IX Wireless donated money to Tory MPs
Another large donor where the public declarations leave ambiguity over the ultimate source of the funding is a little-known broadband provider from Blackburn.
IX Wireless has channelled more than £138,000 of campaign donations to Conservative MPs since 2019, despite only having two staff members, one of whom lives in the United Arab Emirates.
One of those politicians who received money from IX Wireless was Christian Wakeford, who was a Conservative MP at the time before defecting to the Labour Party in January 2022.
He told Sky News he had no “understanding or details as to who they were, what they were doing, or what they wanted” when the donation was made.
Mr Wakeford said he had been told by a senior Tory MP and former party chairman, Sir Jake Berry, that there was a block of money from a donor available, and to write an application for the funding.
“We’d put those applications in,” he said, “and we’d find out a month later whether those applications were successful and that the monies were going to our local Conservative association”.
“It was only at that time we were told the money had come from IX Wireless,” Mr Wakeford said. “I’d never heard of them. The first I’d heard of them was the email telling us.”
Mr Wakeford said he now knows more about the company.
Sir Jake Berry was approached for comment but did not respond.
Upon visiting the headquarters of IX Wireless, Sky News found the office empty with flooded floors.
Standing outside of the company’s front door, Sky News called IX Wireless and spoke to someone who said they were a receptionist.
She confirmed that the address was correct, but would not say that she was inside the headquarters. After placing the call on hold for several minutes, she declined to answer any questions.
Founded by entrepreneur Tahir Mohsan in 2017, the company was a successor to Time, a successful British personal computer brand in the 1980s and 1990s.
In 2005, Mr Mohsan’s computer empire abruptly collapsed with £70m in debts, making as many as 1,500 people redundant.
Thousands of customers had to fight for refunds on products already ordered.
Shortly after the company failed, Mr Mohsan left Britain for Dubai in the UAE.
He has since turned his attention to installing broadband in the North West of England, receiving £675,000 of government funding to roll out high-speed internet in less connected areas of the country.
The company connected 500 premises between August 2018 and June 2020, according to government data seen by Sky News.
IX Wireless and Mr Mohsan did not return repeated requests for comment.
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Hannah White, director of the Institute for Government, told Sky News that MPs needed to be more forthcoming about the money they were taking.
“I think there’s a bigger question here… is that transparency actually sufficient?”
Ms White questioned whether it was appropriate for politicians to avoid questions from members of the press and the public over the identities of donors.
“If an MP is asked for more information, should they feel that actually that is something that they’re willing and able to give? Do they actually know the answer to some of these questions if they’ve taken money from a company that they don’t necessarily know how that is funded? I think that’s actually quite important,” she said.
For days, the people of Paiporta have been dealing with the devastation of their town. But what hurts them now is the sense that they have been forgotten by their country.
As we walk through this town, what we see is relentless hard work – clearing mud, pumping out water, recovering cars.
But none of it is being done by people in uniform. Paiporta is being saved by its own residents, by friends, and by volunteers.
“The town feels like chaos,” says Cristina Hernandez, who moved here a year ago from Madrid
“Nobody has organised anything so we are doing our best. We feel we are abandoned by the government and there are also a lot of thieves in the night, so we are scared.
“It is a nightmare not only because of the floods but also because of the anarchy that we are living through now. After the catastrophe, the worst thing is that we are still scared.
“We don’t have food or clothes. Some of our friends are still missing and some have lost their houses with all their things in them.
“So it is pretty sad that we see trucks going past but nobody is helping with the mud and clearing the houses, so we are alone.”
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As if on cue, we can see a helicopter flying above us, but it passes by. She shakes her head.
“We see them, but we don’t know what they are doing,” she says. It is, at the moment, a cruel sight – a tantalising vision of help that comes and goes.
Around us is a tapestry of devastation – dozens and dozens of wrecked cars, many of them lying in a lake of stagnant water. Cloying mud covers piles of debris. On the road, there is a child’s booster seat, a shoe and a small purse. Tangled wires lie like a web.
Along the road, every house is affected, splattered with mud. You can see the dark waterline where the water reached its highest point.
Ruth is sweeping water along the street, time after time, pushing it towards an open manhole cover. She rests for a second, then starts again.
She takes a break and tells me that she has not seen a policeman, a soldier, a doctor or any other official. “It’s only us who clean up,” she says. “Where are they?”
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Aerial footage captures aftermath of floods
I start to ask her if she is angry with the government, and she interrupts. Her fury is palpable. “Angry? I am so, so angry with the government.
“I don’t care which political party you support, because my flag is Spain. And this is so bad.”
She wanders off, then returns and gently grabs my arm. “Come this way,” she says. “The world should see this.”
We round a corner and come to a street that is entirely packed with a wall of cars, mixed with huge piles of debris.
A fridge freezer, a microwave. Ruth clambers on top of a shattered bonnet and pulls me alongside her. “Nobody can reach these houses; nobody has looked in these cars,” she says. “They have forgotten.”
It’s not true to say that no officials have come to Paiporta. We see local police, civil guard, ambulances and firefighters. As we’re leaving, we even see a military truck pull up.
But nobody seems to be coordinating any of this. At one point, I saw a policeman try to take control of a vehicle recovery, but nobody listened to him. He had a short row with his colleague, and then they both drove off.
As for the military, I had a chat with one of the officers as they stood by the road, waiting for a lorry to move so they could drive in.
The soldier was evidently frustrated. “We want to help, we know we can help, but so far we don’t have the orders about what we have to do,” he said.
“So you need a chief – someone to take control?” I asked. A question answered with a deep, long nod.
Paiporta has suffered grievously in these floods. At least 60 people are dead, a figure that shocked Cristina when I told her. They have no access to the internet, of course, and cannot leave their town. “There will be more,” was her response.
But what makes that pain so much worse is the time it is taking to be helped. Last year, I went with my colleagues to an appalling earthquake in Morocco, and within two days there were well-equipped Spanish response teams helping out, saving lives and leading the response.
And yet now, in their own country, the response is sluggish and indecisive.
A French offer to send in help was turned down. We are told that huge numbers of troops are being mobilised but we have seen hardly any and the ones we’ve met don’t know what they’re supposed to do.
These towns are desperate for leadership, reassurance, help and certainty. Instead, right now, they are fending for themselves.
Moscow has warned the US it should take Russia’s nuclear warnings seriously to avoid World War Three.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s security council and who served as the country’s president from 2008 to 2012, warned the US on Saturday it was “wrong” to believe “that the Russians will never cross a certain line”.
He told Russian-state broadcaster RT that Moscow believed the current US and European political establishments lacked the “foresight and subtlety of mind” displayed by the late Henry Kissinger.
“If we are talking about the existence of our state, as the president of our country has repeatedly said, your humble servant has said, others have said, of course, we simply will not have any choice,” Mr Medvedev said.
Russia has been signalling for weeks to the West that Moscow will respond if the US and its allies help Ukraine fire longer-range missiles deep into Russia.
US diplomats have previously said Washington is not seeking to escalate the war in Ukraine.
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It’s not the first time Mr Medvedev has warned of a serious escalation of the Ukraine conflict.
Back in September, he threatened that Ukraine’s incursion into the Russian territory of Kursk had given Russia formal grounds to use nuclear weapons.
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It comes as Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv became the subject of an overnight aerial attack which lasted until midday today and saw one person injured, city officials said. All drones had been shot down.
“This year, we have faced the threat of ‘Shahed’ drones almost every night – sometimes in the morning, and even during the day,” he wrote on social media, referring to the Iranian-made attack drones used by Russia.
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North Korean troops are near the Ukrainian border
Kyiv’s military said on Friday that Moscow’s forces had launched more than 2,000 drones at civilian and military targets across Ukraine in October alone.
Russia has denied aiming at civilians and said power facilities are legitimate targets when they are part of Ukrainian military infrastructure.
An 18-month-old boy and his 10-year-old sister are among 25 people who were killed in a series of Israeli strikes on central parts of Gaza, hospital officials have said.
Sixteen people were initially reported to have been killed in two strikes on the central Nuseirat refugee camp on Thursday, but officials from the Al Aqsa hospital said bodies continued to be brought in.
The hospital said they had received 21 bodies from the strikes, including some transferred from the Awda hospital, where they had been taken the day before.
Strikes on a motorcycle in Zuwaida and on a house in Deir al Balah on Friday killed four more, hospital officials said, bringing the overall toll to 25.
Five children and seven women are among those who have been confirmed dead.
The mother of the 18-month-old boy is missing and his father was killed in an Israeli strike four months ago, the family has said.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA earlier reported that 57 people had died in the Israeli strikes.
The Israeli military did not comment on the specific strikes but said its troops had identified and eliminated “several armed terrorists” in central Gaza.
It also said its forces had eliminated “dozens of terrorists” in raids in northern Gaza’s Jabalia area – home to one of the territory’s refugee camps.
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It comes as the Israeli military said on Friday it killed senior Hamas official Izz al Din Kassab, describing him as one of the last high-ranking members, in an airstrike in Khan Younis.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have over the past few weeks resumed intense operations in the north of Gaza, claiming they are seeking to stop Hamas, the militant group ruling Gaza, from regrouping.
Meanwhile, top UN officials said in a statement on Friday that the situation in northern Gaza is “apocalyptic” and the entire Palestinian population in the area is at “imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence”.
The overall number of people killed in Gaza in the 13-month war is more than 43,000, officials from the Hamas-run health ministry in the territory, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, reported this week.
It comes as at least 41 people were killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon’s Baalbek region on Friday, the regional governor said.
The deaths were confirmed hours after Lebanon’s health ministry said 30 people had been killed in Israeli strikes on the country in the past 24 hours.
It is not clear if any of those killed in the Baalbek region were included in that figure.
In recent days, Israel has intensified its airstrikes on the northeast city of Baalbek and nearby villages, as well as different parts of southern Lebanon, prompting roughly 60,000 people to flee their homes, according to Hussein Haj Hassan, a Lebanese official representing the region.
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2:20
Israel has issued evacuation orders for people living in parts of Lebanon
Israel’s military said in a statement that attacks “in the area of Beirut” had targeted Hezbollah weapons manufacturing sites, command centres and other infrastructure.
Israeli planes also pounded Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh overnight, destroying dozens of buildings in several neighbourhoods, according to the Lebanese state news agency.
More than 2,800 people have been killed and 13,000 wounded since fighting between Israel and Hezbollah escalated after Hamas’s 7 October attack last year, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said.
Meanwhile, in northern Israel, seven people, including three Israelis and four Thai nationals, were killed by projectiles fired from Lebanon on Thursday, Israeli medics said.