What donations and trips from pro‑Israel groups are recorded for every current MP in the Declassified UK database?
Executive summary
Declassified UK’s investigation records that 180 sitting MPs have, at some point in their careers, received donations, hospitality or paid-for trips from pro‑Israel groups, individuals or Israeli state institutions, with the total value of donations and hospitality exceeding £1 million and more than 240 paid trips costing over £500,000 [1] [2]. The recipients skew heavily Conservative (about 130 MPs) with 41 Labour MPs and a small number from other parties listed; Declassified publishes a full list at the end of its reporting [1] [3].
1. What the Declassified database says in aggregate — scale, party breakdown and totals
Declassified reports that roughly 180 of the UK’s 650 MPs accepted support from pro‑Israel lobby groups or affiliated individuals over the course of their political careers, including around 130 Conservative MPs, 41 Labour MPs, three Liberal Democrats and a handful from the DUP, Reform and independents, and places the cumulative value of donations and hospitality at over £1 million [1] [3]. Between them, those MPs have taken more than 240 paid trips to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories at an estimated cost of over £500,000 to the funders [1] [2].
2. Who the main funders and organisers are, and how the money was spent
Declassified identifies Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) as the single most active organiser of overseas trips, having funded 118 sitting Conservative MPs on 160 occasions and contributing over £330,000 towards those visits over the past decade, while other groups named include Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), ELNET UK, AIPAC, the Jewish National Fund and various individual donors and organisations [4] [1] [5]. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs is recorded as covering costs on some visits, and Declassified estimates that more than £133,000 was spent on Friends‑of‑Israel style trips over a recent two‑year window [6] [7].
3. Labour and Tory differences highlighted by Declassified
Declassified’s separate pieces quantify party patterns: it reports Labour MPs accepted over £280,000 from pro‑Israel sources overall, with 41 Labour MPs listed and 32 Labour MPs recorded as beneficiaries of sponsored travel worth over £64,000 since their elections, whereas Conservative acceptance is numerically larger — about 126–130 Tory MPs in different analyses and donations/hospitality to Conservative MPs amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds [6] [4] [1]. The investigation further notes that some high‑value individual donors—such as Trevor Chinn among Labour donors and Trevor Pears, Michael Lewis, David Meller and Lord Kalms associated with Conservatives—feature prominently in the funding map [6] [1].
4. Contested context and political implications recorded by Declassified
Declassified explicitly notes that not all MPs who took money or trips have been uncritical of Israeli government policy and that some accepted funding many years ago, framing donations as either influence or affirmation of pre‑existing pro‑Israel positions [1]. The reporting flags political sensitivity during the Gaza war period: it records at least 15 MPs who accepted funding for trips amid the Gaza conflict and highlights criticism from activists who argue such acceptance should disqualify MPs, reflecting an explicit normative stance in parts of the source material [1] [8].
5. What the sources do — and do not — allow a reader to conclude
Declassified provides an itemised list of MPs and entries for donations and trips (the full list appears at the bottom of its article, according to secondary reports), which is the database the question targets, but the excerpts available here give aggregate counts, party breakdowns, named major donors and examples of funded trips rather than row‑by‑row reproductions for every MP [1] [3]. Therefore, while the investigation clearly documents the scale, principal funders and the pattern of hospitality and travel, reproducing “every current MP” entry from the Declassified database is beyond what these source excerpts supply; readers seeking the per‑MP entries should consult Declassified’s published list directly as referenced in the reporting [1] [3].