The Conservatives have reportedly received a £5m donation from a healthcare technology entrepreneur.
Frank Hester, the founder and chief executive of the Phoenix Partnership (TPP), has given the seven-figure sum, a Tory party source told the PA news agency.
The figure, first reported by Sky News, is expected to be disclosed by the Electoral Commission when it publishes its latest quarterly data on political donations.
It comes after commission records showed that TPP, 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 had since repaid the money back to his firm.
According to the TPP website, Hester founded the Leeds company in 1997 as he worked on integrated care models. TPP describes the firm as providing “leading software that is transforming healthcare worldwide”.
In 2015, the businessman was made an OBE for his services to healthcare.
Hester has been invited on several government trade missions in the past, including visiting India with then-prime minister David Cameron in 2013. The entrepreneur appeared at number 321 on the 2023 Sunday Times rich list, with the newspaper estimating his wealth at £415m.
The Tories recorded 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 with 2021, with party officials saying this was partly due to “donor pledges moving into 2023”.
The party has recorded 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 multimillion-pound donation pledge from Gary Lubner, a former boss of windscreen repair firm Autoglass. He told the Financial Times he wanted Keir Starmer to lead the Labour party into government and remain there for “a long time”.
The newspaper said he was expected to give about £5m to help fund its election campaign.
The total for the Tories in the first quarter of the year was boosted by a £5m donation from Mohamed Mansour, the party’s senior treasurer and a former minister in the government of Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
• This article was amended on 6 September 2023 to correct some references to TPP as TTP.
