Six senior Labour figures should have known about David Abrahams in 2003

In May 2002 Charles Clarke (then chair of the Labour Party) announced the creation of a new six person committee to vet all Labour Party donations of more than £5,000.

The members were:

• Charles Clarke
• Lord Evans of Temple Guiting, chairman of Faber and Faber
• Margaret Prosser, deputy leader of the Transport and General Workers’ Union
• Lord Levy, the Labour party’s former chief fundraiser
• David Triesman, Labour’s general secretary (during whose tenure several David Abrahams donations were received)
• Baroness Jay of Paddington, former Labour leader of the House of Lords (who has featured in the David Abrahams story already)

The first of the David Abrahams-related donations was made from Janet Dunn, and received by the Labour Party on 31 January 2003, i.e. a few months after this committee was created. It was for £25,000, which is more than the £5,000 threshold for referral to this committee.

So what happened when that donation came in?

Labour’s story so far this week seems to be that the committee never met. But Levy (and almost certainly Clarke and Triesman) would have known that Labour was receiving donations from all sorts of sources for more than £5,000. And several would have known about Labour’s stated policy of having donations of more than £5,000 vetted by the committee. For example, David Triesman appeared on Radio 4’s Today program talking about the new committee.

So what did happen?