Labour returns £15,000 donation

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The Labour Party has returned a £15,000 to a charity after an investigation by the Charity Commission.

The Commission ordered Catz Club - a charity which runs after-school clubs - to recover the money it gave to Labour.

Charities are not allowed to make donations to political parties.

Labour said it had accepted the donation in good faith and followed the correct procedures but returned the money when the charity asked for it.

The Catz Club made a £7,500 donation to Labour and paid a £7,500 fee to attend a Labour event where it lobbied politicians.

Conservative MP Greg Clark complained about the donation to the Charity Commission.

He said : "It beggars belief that Labour should accept money from a lottery-funded charity that surely needs all the money it can get to fund its clubs for disadvantaged schoolchildren.

"Labour should have known that it was wrong to accept this donation."

The Charity Commission criticised the charity but not the Labour Party.

A Labour Party spokesman said: "The Electoral Commission has confirmed that the Labour Party did nothing wrong in accepting this donation, which is allowed under party funding rules.

"We accepted this donation in good faith, but once Catz Club were told that they had inadvertently breached Charity Commission rules, we were asked to return the donation, something we were happy to do."