Labour raises £350k more than Tories in first campaign week

The Labour Party raised £351,990 more in donations than the Conservatives in the first week of the general election campaign, according to the Electoral Commission.

Labour raised £926,908, followed by the Conservatives on £574,918, and Liberal Democrats with £454,999. The Scottish National Party raised £36,305 and Reform UK £140,000.

This is a huge turnaround on the 2019 election, when the party was led by Jeremy Corbyn.

Back then, the Conservatives attracted £5.7m in the first week of the campaign - which was 87% of all donations - compared to Labour's £218,500.

This time round, the biggest donation of £500,000 is to Labour, from Toledo Productions, a company set up by Duncan Kenworthy, who was a producer on Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Love Actually.

Official figures from the Electoral Commission show £3.247m was donated to political parties in the first week of the general election campaign, between 30 May - 5 June.

Of the smaller parties, Reform UK had the largest donation figure of £140,000, closely followed by the SNP with £127,998 and the Cooperative Party with £120,000.

The Climate Party and the Social Democratic Party both declared £25,000.

The Green Party has not declared any donations, because they did not meet the £11,000 minimum threshold for declarations.

The total figure includes public funds of £830,218, largely made up of Short money, which is given to opposition parties with more than two MPs and named after the MP Edward Short who first proposed the idea of funding parties per seat.

Although Plaid Cymru did not receive any donations, they did receive £33,194 of public funding.

Louise Edwards of the Electoral Commission said this was the first of six reports on donations to parties, which are "an important part of delivering transparency for voters".