Which UK political parties received the largest donations from pro-Israel groups in 2023 and 2024?
Executive summary
Declassified UK’s extensive audit shows pro‑Israel groups, individuals and state‑linked institutions channelled more than £1.2 million in donations and hospitality to UK politicians across 2023–24, with the Conservative Party taking the lion’s share by number of recipients and reported value while Labour received substantial targeted gifts from a handful of major donors [1] [2] [3]. Reporting highlights both broad, relatively small payments and hospitality to dozens of Conservatives and several large, concentrated donations to senior Labour figures, but gaps in public disclosure mean exact year‑by‑year party totals for 2023 versus 2024 cannot be fully reconciled from available sources [4] [5].
1. Conservatives: the largest bloc of recipients by MPs and reported cash/hospitality
Declassified’s dataset found around 130 Conservative MPs have accepted funding from pro‑Israel groups over their careers, and other outlets summarising that work report the Conservatives received the greatest aggregate value of gifts and hospitality disclosed in the probe—Middle East Eye cited more than £430,000 in reported donations and hospitality to Conservative MPs in the period covered by the investigation [1] [3]. Declassified’s itemised list of donations and hospitality shows many lower‑value but widespread gifts and funded “fact‑finding” trips to Israel that largely benefitted Tory parliamentarians in late 2023 and into 2024, illustrating how influence can be spread through many modest transactions rather than only headline sums [4] [6].
2. Labour: fewer recipients but several very large donors concentrated support
Labour MPs were fewer in number on Declassified’s list—reported as 41 MPs historically—but the party received high‑profile, large donations from individual pro‑Israel backers: Declassified and partner reporting identify Sir Trevor Chinn and other major figures giving tens of thousands to senior Labour frontbenchers, and one donor, Stuart Roden, is reported to have given in excess of £1 million to Labour since 2023, a disclosure that, if read at face value, dramatically changes the party‑level arithmetic for that period [1] [2] [5]. Declassified separately quantified that sitting Labour MPs have accepted over £280,000 in donations from pro‑Israel groups or individuals within the dataset used for its reporting, showing both breadth and concentrated wealth in the party’s pro‑Israel funding streams [7] [1].
3. Smaller parties and cross‑benchers: present but marginal in totals
Beyond the two big parties, Declassified’s research and subsequent coverage identify donations to three Liberal Democrats, three DUP members, two independents and Reform’s sole MP, but the numbers and monetary totals for those parties are small relative to the Conservative and Labour figures cited in the investigations [2] [1]. The aggregate sum reported across all parties and MPs in Declassified’s work exceeds £1.2 million, but that figure blends decades of declared funding, hospitality and trips as well as more recent 2023–24 activity, complicating strict year‑by‑year attribution by party [1] [4].
4. How the money was routed, and why exact 2023 vs 2024 party totals remain uncertain
Journalistic analysis emphasises that much pro‑Israel spending takes the form of paid trips, hospitality and in‑kind support as well as direct donations, and UK rules and reporting practices can leave many such items recorded as hospitality or “amount unclear” in public logs—Declassified’s downloadable spreadsheet evidences many entries where amounts are rounded, historic, or unspecified, and that makes a precise split of 2023 versus 2024 receipts by party impossible from the public record alone [4] [6]. Multiple outlets note the potential for both genuine policy alignment and deliberate influence as interpretations of the same data, and a range of commentators and researchers framed the flows as either routine political support or evidence of lobbying reach [2] [7].
5. Bottom line and reporting limits
Based on available reporting, the Conservative Party accounted for the largest share of disclosed pro‑Israel donations by number of MPs and significant hospitality spend in the Declassified dataset and related coverage, while Labour attracted a smaller list of recipients but received very large documented donations from individual pro‑Israel funders—most notably the reporting of Stuart Roden’s alleged seven‑figure giving since 2023—which means both parties can be described as major beneficiaries but in different ways; precise 2023 vs 2024 party totals cannot be definitively extracted from the published sources because of aggregation, undisclosed amounts and mixed forms of support [3] [1] [5] [4].