More than £215,000 of the vast sums that the Conservative Party poured into marginal seats in the run-up to the general election came from the mysterious United and Cecil Club. In the Register of Members’ Interests, 51 Tory MPs declared donations to their constituency parties from the club, ranging from £1,000 to £10,000, in the first three months of this year.

Most beneficiaries are new MPs, though there are a few who won their seats in 2010 by narrow margins. The three whose parties received £10,000 each were sitting MPs Kris Hopkins and David Morris and Ben Howlett, who took Bath from the Lib Dems.

United and Cecil is a members’ association with only one known purpose – to collect and disburse donations to the Conservative Party. On the Election Commission registry, its address is given as a £2m private house near Slough. Most of the MPs who have benefited from it give its address as a stables near Windsor, run by Tim Lord, former chief executive of the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association. A few give its address as Munslows, an accountants’ firm in High Holborn, London, and one entry suggests it is based in the same building as the Carlton Club, a short walk from Parliament.

United and Cecil has no contact details and its membership list is not public. It does not need to declare its sources of money as it comes in individual donations below £7,500. Given the clamour the Tories raise about Labour’s union donations, you might think they would have qualms about being funded by a secretive organisation, but apparently not.

Major donors to the Conservative Party Show all 10 1 /10 Major donors to the Conservative Party Major donors to the Conservative Party Michael Farmer Hedge fund: RK Capital Management Worth: £150m Total donation: £6,556,092 Rex Features Major donors to the Conservative Party Sir Michael Hintze Hedge fund: CQS Worth: £1,055m Total donation: 3,221,027 Major donors to the Conservative Party Lord Fink Hedge fund: ISAM Worth: £130m Total donation: £3,172,007 EPA Major donors to the Conservative Party Chris Rokos Hedge fund: Brevan Howard (pictured) Worth: £230m Total donation: £1,344,850 Google Street View Major donors to the Conservative Party Andrew Law Hedge fund: Caxton Associates Worth: £350m Total donation: £1,226,411 Rex Major donors to the Conservative Party Sir Paul Ruddock Hedge fund: Lansdowne Partners Worth: £300m Total donation: £818,783 Rex Major donors to the Conservative Party David Harding Hedge fund: Winton Capital Worth: £750m Total donation: £593,765 Major donors to the Conservative Party Hugh Sloane Hedge fund: Sloane Robinson Worth: £185 Total donation: £533,500 Major donors to the Conservative Party Sir John and Peter Beckwith (L) Hedge fund: RiverCrest Capital Worth: £350m Total donation: £520,996 Rex Major donors to the Conservative Party Alexander Knaster Hedge fund: Pamplona Capital Management Worth: £1,266m Total donation: £400,000

Conservatives in the money

Meanwhile, it is customary to look through the Register for MPs who are making vast amounts of money outside Parliament, such as the Tory MPs Stephen Phillips and Geoffrey Cox, who are also high-earning barristers, and Boris Johnson. A comparatively new entrant to this club is Nadine Dorries, whose sideline as a fiction writer brought in more than £100,000 in 12 months.

BBC’s belated apology

The BBC needs to tread carefully in its dealings with the Tories, with a decision pending on the licence fee and charter renewal. That may be part of the explanation for a graceful apology received by the former Conservative chairman, Grant Shapps.

His complaint was that the BBC got very excited about a story that an anonymous Wikipedia contributor had been barred from contributing to the site after making flattering additions to Shapps’s entry. It was implied, but never substantiated, that Shapps or someone he knew was doctoring Wikipedia.

The BBC was not so interested when the story turned out to be flakey, and the culprit was exposed as Lib Dem activist. James Harding, the BBC’s director of news, has written to Shapps, admitting that the BBC did not give the later development enough coverage. “I’m sorry we didn’t do as much as I would have liked,” he wrote.

The Rock displays its might

Gibraltar may be small, but it does not lack ambition. It has a Supreme Court, which has ordered a right-wing Spanish union called Manos Limpias (“Clean Hands”) to pay £30,000 damages plus £35,000 costs for libelling the Rock’s Chief Minister Fabian Picardo, whom they accused of smuggling, drug-trafficking and money-laundering.