Prime Minister David Cameron has been dragged deeper into the damaging cash-for-access row surrounding the Conservative Party as he admitted entertaining a number of “significant” party donors at his Downing Street flat barely 24 hours after denying claims by a senior party figure that anyone paying a large enough donation could have private access to the boss.
Downing Street also released names of more than a dozen big donors Mr. Cameron privately hosted at No. 10 and his official retreat, Chequers, since becoming Prime Minister two years ago. They include bankers, hedge-fund tycoons, brokers and rich industrialists; some of whom have benefited from government patronage in the past. The row erupted on Sunday after a senior party official was secretly filmed promising access to Mr. Cameron and his Ministers for a donation of £250,000.
The Sunday Times recorded Peter Cruddas, a co-treasurer of the party, boasting to its undercover reporters posing as representatives of a foreign businessman that he could arrange private meetings with Mr Cameron if their client joined the “premier league” of donors who gave the party £250,000 a year.
“It will be awesome for your business…. You are not seeing the Prime Minister, you're seeing David Cameron… and you will be able to ask him practically any question you want,” he told them.
Mr. Cruddas promptly resigned after Mr. Cameron described his behaviour as “unacceptable”.
But as the row grew with the Labour Party demanding that he “come clean”, the Prime Minister admitted there had been four occasions when he invited party donors to his Downing Street flat for private dinners. But he insisted that these were people he had known for “many years” and none of the dinners was “fundraising dinners and none of these dinners were paid for by the taxpayer”.
“Peter Cruddas has never recommended anyone to come to dinner in my flat, nor has he been to dinner there himself,” he said announcing an internal investigation into Mr. Cruddas' claims.
Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch, owner of The Sunday Times and once a Cameron fan, taunted him writing on Twitter: “What was Cameron thinking? No one, rightly or wrongly, will believe his story.”
