A Conservative Foreign Office minister has joked that benefit claimants can afford to donate £55,000 to his party’s election campaign as he entertained some of the wealthiest people in Britain.



Hugo Swire was secretly recorded making the remarks by Channel 4’s Dispatches at the Conservative ‘black and white’ fundraising ball last month as part of a sting on senior politicians from all three main parties.

Before an audience that included hedge fund owners and industrialists, Swire led an auction at the Grosvenor House hotel in Mayfair which raised millions of pounds for party candidates.



At one point, footage showed that the MP for East Devon attempted to encourage a bid by saying “£60,000 … Ian, persuade him … He’s not on benefits is he? Well if he is, then he can afford it … £55,000?”.

At the same event, Treasury minister David Gauke was filmed dining with executives from Lycamobile, a telecommunications firm which has donated more than £825,000 to the Tories but has been criticised for not paying enough corporation tax in Britain despite generating millions in revenue.



Lycamobile’s executives bid £200,000 for a statue of Margaret Thatcher, the programme makers said, as well as placing winning bids for two other prizes: lunch with Michael Gove and tea with the mayor of London, Boris Johnson.

Dispatches recorded the secret film after the entrepreneur Paul Wilmott posed as a potential donor to the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties. He suggested he was willing to donate £50,000 to each party.

In the course of the investigation he met all three party leaders, met four cabinet ministers and two shadow cabinet ministers.

Viewers also saw Wilmott attend a private lunch for donors in January with the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, at the Carlton Club in Covent Garden, central London.

Alexander Temerko, a former Russian businessman who made his fortune in oil before fleeing Russia and gaining British citizenship in 2011, sat next to Hunt. He and his energy firm OGN have donated £690,000 to the Conservative party.

The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, shakes hands with Alexander Temerko in the Channel 4 Dispatches programme. Photograph: Channel 4

Before the arrival of Hunt, Temerko is filmed saying: “All MPs which I support, which is 37 MPs … You know for change [of] prime minister you need 20, I have 37. Much more than half.”

According to the latest electoral commission figures, Temerko or his energy company OGN have given direct donations totalling some £220,000 to 24 MPs or constituency organisations. The latest quarterly donations have yet to be published.

Temerko’s lawyers told Dispatches that the conversation at the donor club meeting was lighthearted and his reference to supporting 37 MPs was an offhand comment and a mere reference to the number of MPs and candidates that he had in mind to donate to, not the number of donations he had actually made at that time.

A Conservative party spokesman said: “The fact that donors to the Conservative party are invited to attend events with senior figures within the party is clearly and openly stated on our website.

“All donations to the Conservative party are properly and transparently declared to the Electoral Commission, published by them, and comply fully with Electoral Commission rules.”

Wilmott also met with the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Chris Leslie, to discuss the introduction of a financial transaction tax that might benefit a software business he claimed to be setting up.

In an email to Wilmott, Leslie wrote: “Many thanks for this Paul … I think you make some good points about the best way to introduce an FTT… I’ll have a good think about some of these good points ahead of our manifesto but I appreciate any updates you might have along the way.”



Wilmott also met Nick Clegg after being introduced by Lord Paul Strasburger.



During a discussion between all three, the peer said to the Liberal Democrat leader: “Paul [Wilmott] is trying to find a way to support us without sticking his head too far above the parapet and we’re working out how to involve his family in making donations.”



In response, Clegg said: “A very useful thing as well, it’s not a financial year calendar, it’s an end of year calendar, so you can do things either side.”

Wilmott had told Strasburger that he was thinking of donating £50,000 but would rather his name not be linked to the donation. Strasburger suggested that it was “perfectly legal” for Wilmott to uses his wife or stepfather.

The peer resigned the party whip on Friday night, vowed to clear his name and said he had been entrapped by the programme makers.

“Whatever Channel 4 may say in their Dispatches programme, I do not think I have committed any offence,” he said in a statement. “Having said that, I believe that we should all be accountable for what we do, so I have invited the Electoral Commission to carry out an investigation into my actions,” he added.

According to electoral law, a party must identify donors if they give a political party more than £7500 in a calendar year. The party must provide the donor’s name to the Electoral Commission which discloses it in a public register. It is a breach of of the law if there is an attempt to deceive who the donation has come from.