A Labour donor has stepped down from his role as a civil servant at the Treasury, while the party comes under fire for granting a No 10 pass to another, as ministers deny they are giving preferential treatment to their funders.
Ian Corfield has resigned as an official to the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, the Sunday Times reported this weekend, becoming a temporary unpaid adviser instead after days of controversy over his role.
The paper also revealed that Waheed Alli, one of Labour’s biggest fundraisers, had been given full access to Downing Street, where he organised a post-election garden reception for others who contributed to the party’s campaign.
Pat McFadden, the cabinet office minister, said on Sunday he did not think Alli continued to hold a pass, but could not say why he had been granted one in the first place.
“I don’t think he’s got a pass any more,” he told Sky News. “He may have needed it for a short time in that period immediately after the election. He won’t have been involved in government or policy decisions.”
Lord Alli, a television executive who was ennobled by Tony Blair in 1998, is a crucial figure in the Labour party, having personally donated £500,000 since 2020 and helped corral others to give much more as head of fundraising.
He worked as the party’s chief fundraiser for the general election, having been hired by Keir Starmer in 2022.
In the run-up to the election he gave the Labour leader tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of personal donations, including £16,200-worth of work clothing, £2,845-worth of glasses and £36,400 for private office costs and accommodation.
The Labour government has been criticised in its first few weeks in office for handing top jobs to some of its most prominent backers.
Corfield, who has donated more than £20,000 to Labour politicians in the last 10 years, including £5,000 to Reeves, was appointed in July as a director to the Treasury. The appointment caused further controversy when it emerged the civil service watchdog had not been told of his donations history.
This weekend, the Sunday Times revealed Corfield had stepped down from his job as a director and would act as an unpaid adviser, continuing to help organise the government’s international investment summit in October.
The government is also under fire for having appointed Jess Sargeant, who used to work for the Starmer-ite thinktank Labour Together, as a deputy director in the Cabinet Office’s propriety and constitution unit – a role usually given to a civil servant.
This week, Hannah White, the director of the Institute for Government, wrote a lengthy blogpost criticising the government’s approach to official appointments.
“An impartial civil service matters,” she wrote. “It is an asset to ministers and an asset to the country. Short-circuiting the recruitment practices, designed to ensure appointment on merit and protect impartiality, is a mistake.”
