MPs should be more discerning about who they take donations from, says Foreign Affairs Committee chair

• The chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee has urged greater caution when receiving money from donors.
• Tom Tugendhat MP told Insider "just because you could" accept donations "doesn't mean you should".

The chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee has called for MPs and political parties to exercise greater caution in accepting donations.

Tom Tugendhat, the Conservative MP, told Insider he had turned down donations from British citizens who had previously or would go on to give money to other politicians.

His comments came in the wake of renewed pressure from the opposition Labour party, which claim the Conservatives have accepted £1.93 million from donors with business links to Russia since Johnson became prime minister and leader of the party in July 2019.

The Conservatives say all donations are legitimate and properly declared. For individuals to donate to political parties, they must be on the electoral register, which requires British, Irish, or Commonwealth citizenship.

But Tugendhat told Insider that checks on accepting financial support should go beyond the legal permissibility of the donation to include a political judgment.

"Just because you could doesn't mean you should," he said. "I'm absolutely sure the Conservative Party has taken money perfectly legally. I'm in no doubt at all that Mr or Mrs Jones was perfectly entitled to donate money. But there are lots of people who are entitled to donate money. You don't have to accept it from all of them."

"Of course, it's not illegal to accept money from a British citizen. But there are British citizens I wouldn't take money off. So I think you've just got to be careful," he added.

Tugendhat, who has made public his ambition to stand for Conservative leader, said he had "declined" donations "from certain people" who would go on to or had already given money to other politicians.

"It depends on the individual," he explained. "Sometimes it's just, 'I don't know enough about you, so I'm not going there'. And sometimes it's 'I know enough about you and I'm not going there!'"

Tugendhat's remarks echo those of senior Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin's call for there to be greater scrutiny of donors, first reported by Insider on Thursday.

Penny Mordaunt, another possible leadership contender, recently criticised Conservative MP colleagues for continuing to meet with a major party donor, Alexander Temerko, who had called her a security threat.

A less debated aspect of political donations are those coming from companies registered in the UK. Registering a company in the UK requires fewer checks than joining the electoral register.

Tugendhat noted that shell companies provided particular challenges, and urged colleagues to use their discretion rather than fall back on simply what is legal.

"It's quite hard to write laws for what are fundamentally political judgment calls," he added. "It's perfectly legitimate for people to criticise political groups, parties, whatever, who do accept money from organisations that are not clear.... you don't know who they are, you don't know what they are. That's where political judgment comes in."