Theresa May has been dragged further into the controversy about honours after it emerged that her leadership campaign was given £35,000 by two Tory donors put forward for a knighthood and peerage by David Cameron.
May’s campaign received £15,000 from Ian Taylor, the oil executive at Vitol and funder of the pro-EU campaign, who asked not to be given an honour after an outcry over Cameron’s list.
She was also given £20,000 by IPGL, the company linked to businessman Michael Spencer, whom Cameron recommended for a peerage before it was blocked by Whitehall.
Another donor to May’s campaign is James Lupton, a banker who gave £25,000 and was granted a peerage at Cameron’s request last year.
The donations were revealed on the register of MPs’ interests, showing she took in around £275,000 in total, which will not all have been spent given the brevity of the campaign.
May’s allies have tried to distance her from the row by indicating she would do things differently to Cameron, who has been heavily criticised by Labour and the Liberal Democrats for wanting to hand out awards to aides and donors.
However, she has been pulled further into the controversy since it emerged she has the power to block the rewards recommended by her predecessor.
There is speculation that the list of honours and peerages may be released on Friday as Downing Street seeks to draw a line under the row that has rolled on for five days since a list was leaked to the Sunday Times.
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats leader, said the donations show how the “whole sorry saga has now landed on the prime minister’s desk”. “She needs to get a grip on this and make sure the whole system is more open and transparent. It’s things like this that erode people’s confidence in politics,” he said.
Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, has called for May to block Cameron’s whole list and argued for other parties to boycott the system until that has happened.
Earlier, Cameron’s former strategy adviser, Steve Hilton, said the resignation honours list revealed a “serious type of very British corruption”.
The former Downing Street aide, who left in 2012, wrote in the Times: “David Cameron’s resignation honours list is a symptom of a wider problem: our corrupt and decaying democracy. So let’s not just be outraged about it – let’s use this moment to bring about radical reform of the whole rotten system.
“The corruption comes when the honours system starts to clash with democratic principles. The most obvious way this happens is when people who are not elected make the laws which we live under.
“We’ve just fought and won a referendum campaign on the principle that unelected bureaucrats in the EU should not have the power to impose laws on us.
“I’m not clear why this principle applies to unelected foreigners but not to homegrown appointees. The decision to leave the EU was a victory for people power. But that’s just the start; until we have a fully elected legislature, we cannot call ourselves a true democracy.
“The other, even more serious type of very British corruption revealed by the resignation honours list is the fact that these honours – and even places in our legislature – can be purchased with political donations.”
The register of MPs’ interests also revealed that Cameron’s free stay at the Chelsea townhouse of his friend Dominic Johnson is worth £2,650 a week – or more than £37,000 in total for use of the accommodation until the end of October.
