Under a new law, which will come into force shortly in Britain, all political donations of more than 5,000 British pounds (some 800,000 yen) will have to be reported and foreign donations will be disallowed. The rules have been brought in to deal with suspicions that large donations to party funds may tempt recipients to make decisions on policy in line with the wishes of the donors. The present government came under fire shortly after the last election when it was reported that the Labor Party had received a gift of 1 million British pounds from Bernie Ecclestone, a rich entrepreneur who has managed to monopolize Formula One motor racing. The government had decided to exempt, at least for a time, Formula One from the proposed ban on tobacco advertising. The exemption was "justified" on the grounds that without it Formula One would not be viable. In the end, Labor was forced to repay the gift.
The Labor Party has been criticized in recent weeks for accepting three large gifts of 2 million British pounds each from three successful businessmen who are or have become supporters of the party. There has been no evidence that these gifts have influenced government policy or will be likely to do so, although the fact that one of the gifts has come from the man who is leading the consortium to take over the Millennium Dome at Greenwich (now closed) has raised suspicions among skeptics. It has also been suggested that donors of such sums might feel that they deserved, and be rewarded with, a peerage. The acceptance of such large sums from people who would not be regarded as natural and traditional party supporters offended some more traditional members of the party. It also gave the opposition Conservatives a welcome opportunity to accuse the government of sleaze, although their own record is far from clean.
The last Conservative government ended in a plethora of accusations of sleaze. One former Cabinet minister, Jonathan Aitken, after losing a libel action against the Guardian newspaper was found guilty of perjury and had to serve a prison sentence. Another former Conservative minister, Lord (Geoffrey) Archer won his action for libel, but some of the evidence used in the case has proved to be false and he now faces charges of perjury. Another former minister, Neil Hamilton, lost his libel action against the owner of Harrods, who had accused him of accepting bribes (envelopes stuffed with notes) for asking parliamentary questions on his behalf.