Greater Manchester’s MPs have gained over £1.6 million from financial interests since 19 December 2019, according to the Westminster Accounts investigation by Sky News and Tortoise Media.
Labour’s total of 20 MPs during this period have landed more than £1.25 million, while the Conservatives’ nine have received in excess of £350,000.
Such a disparity is largely due to Labour MPs Rebecca Long-Bailey (£406,800), Angela Rayner (£300,200), and Lisa Nandy (£286,700) receiving colossal sums, placing them in the top 20 politicians nationally.
They are some way ahead of Sir Graham Brady, whose £193,500 is the most of any Conservative in Greater Manchester.
With these high-profile outliers excluded, the mean average Labour MP in the county gained £15,855 – around £2,500 less than the Tory average but still higher than the national norm of £14,780.
These figures include donations, payments, and the value of gifts declared on the parliamentary Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
They do not account for salary, ministerial earnings, or whether MPs gave away any of the money they received.
Mancunian Matters trawled through the data to bring you information specific to this region, including the interactive map below, where you can hover over a constituency to see how much its MP made.
The biggest donor to Labour MPs was trade union behemoth Unite, who contributed £292,210 in donations and gifts to nine individuals, including a whopping £249,000 in total to Rebecca Long-Bailey.
This is in line with national donations to Labour, as Unite coughed up £9.4 million to the party and its MPs to become their strongest supporter overall.
Sir Graham Brady made £46,470 and £29,270 from the Dods Group and Snowshill Allied Holdings, companies the Chairman on the 1922 Committee has worked for.
But the most consistent benefactors of Tory MPs in Greater Manchester was the Carlton Club, which paid £15,000 to four separate MPs, and the elusive IX Wireless, a broadband firm which paid £19,000 to four MPs as well.
IX Wireless, a significant donor to Conservative MPs since 2019 despite having only two registered staff, has been accused of a lack of transparency and its Blackburn office was found empty by Sky News’ Sam Coates when he went to investigate.
Christian Wakeford’s financial interests took a steep downturn after crossing he crossed the floor from the Conservatives to Labour in January 2022 amid the Partygate scandal.
The Bury South MP declared £23,819 during his 25 months in Boris Johnson’s contingent, but has only seen £2,411 in the year since his defection.
What do the MPs say?
Mancunian Matters reached out to several MPs, including Long-Bailey, who received over 100 times more than the lowest-earning Labour MP in the county, Graham Stringer.
She said: “All donations were used to promote transformative socialist policies, including an extension of employment rights, a plan to end ‘in-work’ poverty by increasing the living wage, and taxing the rich to properly fund free public services.
“I have no outside earnings whatsoever beyond my salary as an MP.”
A firm called MPM Connect with no registered staff has donated £345,217 to three Labour MPs since December 2019, though none of these are in Manchester.
MPM Connect is a notable donor to Labour politicians, but when Sky News spoke to a receptionist in their registered building, she said she had never heard of the company.
Long-Bailey said: “There must be full transparency over who donors are and use of donations, a ban on donations from tax avoiders, the introduction of a new and detailed and publicly available lobbying register, and a ban on second jobs for MPs.”
Sir Graham Brady, the Conservative MP with the highest declared financial interests in Greater Manchester, said: “Any remuneration received by me is fully and properly declared and is entirely in keeping with the MPs Code of Conduct. The Sky News report is wholly inaccurate in that it conflates donations to political parties, and indeed resources for All-Party Groups, with personal income. This is grossly inaccurate.
“I have always spent far more hours than a full-time job fulfilling my parliamentary duties, including work in the evenings and most weekends; I devote very little time to my outside interests and always over-estimate time spent when registering those interests.”
Sky News responded to the allegation that the Westminster Reports are inaccurate.
The organisation said: “To create Westminster Accounts, Tortoise Media and Sky News have collected and analysed publicly available information which is submitted by MPs themselves to Parliament. It is a first-of-its-kind searchable database which aims to increase public transparency and make it easier for voters to examine financial contributions to UK politicians, All-Party Parliamentary Groups, and political parties.”
The methology for the Westminster Accounts can be found here.
Featured image from the Sky News website.
