Plaid Cymru slams Conservative involvement with Lord Ashcroft (From Western Telegraph)

Plaid Cymru slams Conservative involvement with Lord Ashcroft

9:00am Saturday 13th March 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(1)

Plaid Cymru has criticised the Conservative’s involvement with Lord Ashcroft and his funding of the party.

It has been revealed that Lord Ashcroft is registered as a non-dom and therefore does not pay UK taxes on money earned abroad but will pay some UK tax. A non-dom is someone resident in the UK but not domiciled in the UK for tax purposes.

The Electoral Commis-sion’s record of donations lists one donation of £4,500 in October 2004 and a second of £9,000 in March 2005 to the Preseli Pembrokeshire Association from Bearwood Corporate Services Ltd, a company controlled by Lord Ashcroft.

Plaid’s parliamentary candidate Henry Jones-Davies launched a attack on the Preseli Pembrokeshire Conservative office, calling the revelations about Lord Ashcroft an “absolute disgrace”.

“Plaid Cymru in Preseli are firmly of the opinion that Preseli Tories should publicly declare how much they have received from Lord Ashcroft’s front-companies and pledge to repay the sums they have spent on their local campaigns. “They also have a moral duty to refuse to accept money from this discredited donor in future,” added Mr Jones-Henry.

Responding to Plaid Cymru’s claims, a Preseli Pembrokeshire Conser-vative Association spokes-man said that money received from Bearwood Services Ltd had been used to pay the salary of a campaign assistant from Haverfordwest.

He said: “Not a single penny went to the candidate and not a penny was spent on any of the campaign materials.

“The donation was publicly and properly registered with the Electoral Commission at the time and the commission has ruled that this donation was perfectly legal and permissible.”

Following an 18-month investigation, the electoral commission concluded that donations made by Bearwood Corporate Services Ltd did not breach the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 and its donations were permissible.