The Conservatives have reportedly received a £5 million donation from a healthcare technology entrepreneur.
Frank Hester, the founder and chief executive of The Phoenix Partnership (TPP), has donated the seven-figure sum, a Tory party source told the PA news agency.
The figure, first reported by Sky News, is expected to be revealed by the Electoral Commission when it publishes its latest quarterly data on political donations.
It comes after commission records showed TTP, which specialises in healthcare software, donated £11,300 to the Tories in February and £145,000 in March. Last week, the company said the donations should have been made in Hester’s name and he has since paid the money back to his company.
According to TTP’s website, Hester founded the Leeds-based company in 1997 while working on integrated care models. TPP describes the company as providing “leading software that is transforming healthcare around the world”.
In 2015, the businessman was awarded an OBE for services to healthcare.
Hester has been invited on several government trade missions in the past, including a visit to India with then Prime Minister David Cameron in 2013. The entrepreneur appeared at number 321 on the Sunday Times’ 2023 rich list, with the newspaper estimating his wealth at £415m.
The Tories made a loss of £2.3m last year, according to the Electoral Commission’s annual accounts, in what the party described as a “turbulent year”. Income from donations fell by £2.4m compared to 2021, with party officials saying this was partly due to “donor pledges moving into 2023”.
The party received more than £12m in donations in the first three months of this year, with Labour raising £4.4m and the Liberal Democrats £1.3m.
Earlier this year, it emerged that Labour had secured a multi-million pound donation pledge from Gary Lubner, a former boss of windscreen repair firm Autoglass. He told the Financial Times that he wanted Keir Starmer to lead Labour into government and stay there “for a long time”.
The newspaper said he was expected to donate around £5 million to help fund the election campaign.
The Tory total for the first quarter of the year was boosted by a £5m donation from Mohamed Mansour, the party’s chief treasurer and a former minister in the government of Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
