Downing Street embarked on its third U-turn in 24 hours when it published the names of donors who have been invited by David Cameron for lunch or dinner at Chequers.
Lord Ashcroft, the party's former deputy chairman, leads the list of Tory donors invited to the prime minister's official country residence. He was invited on 6 June 2010, a month after the general election.
Other donors invited to Chequers included David Rowland and his wife, who had lunch at Chequers in August 2010. Rowland resigned as Conservative treasurer that month, two months after his appointment, following a campaign led by a senior Tory.
Downing Street instructed Tory party officials to trawl through the Chequers guest list to find the names of donors as the prime minister struggled to contain a row over party funding in the wake of the resignation of the Tory treasurer Peter Cruddas.
The move came as Ed Miliband intensified the pressure on the prime minister by replying to a Commons statement by Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister. Maude started the day by saying it was "nonsense" to suggest that details of private dinners hosted by the prime minister should be published.
A few hours later Cameron sought to draw a line under the row by announcing the party would publish details of all Downing Street dinners attended by major donors who had given more than £50,000. Downing Street published a list of dinners in Downing Street attended by 11 donors and their spouses.
As Labour turned the spotlight on dinners hosted by the prime minister at Chequers, Downing Street initially said that it would be too complicated to publish a list of all guests invited to the prime minister's official country residence. No 10 publishes details of guests whose meals are funded by the taxpayer.
But Downing Street said it would be too difficult to publish the names of those whose meals are funded by Cameron himself or by the Conservative party. "We don't want to publish a list that turns out to be misleading," one source said shortly before Maude stood up in the Commons at 3.30pm.
Within 20 minutes, however, Downing Street announced that it would try to publish a list of donors invited to Chequers. The decision on Chequers was the third U-turn since the row erupted over the weekend when the Sunday Times published a video showing that Cruddas had been offering access to the prime minister for donations of between £200,000 to £250,000. Andrew Feldman, the Tory co-chair, was initially placed in charge of a party investigation. But he withdrew after it became clear that he appointed Cruddas. Lord Gold, a Tory lawyer, will take charge of the enquiry.
Amid a feeling in Downing Street that Maude misjudged the mood in his Today programme interview, Cameron tried to regain the initiative by announcing a series of measures at the start of a speech on dementia. Shortly afterwards, the Tory party published details of four dinners in Downing Street attended by "major" donors.
Speaking on Radio 4's The World at One, Jack Straw, the former Labour foreign secretary, said of the U-turn: "This is symptomatic of pandemonium that has broken out inside the Conservative party at the highest reaches of government. Why on earth could they not have said this on Saturday night?"
Straw criticised the Tories after Cameron said:
• The Conservative party would publish details every quarter of "any meals attended by any major donors, whether they take place at Downing Street, Chequers or any official residence".
• The Conservative party would publish a register of major donors who attend the Leaders' Group. This is open to anyone who donates at least £50,000 a year to the party.
• Nobody in the No 10 policy unit met anyone suggested by Cruddas, who had said he had passed on concerns to the No 10 policy committee. Cameron said there was no such committee. But he said that in future, if any ministerial contact with a party donor prompted a request for policy advice, the minister would refer it to his or her private office who could seek advice from the department's permanent secretary.
• All political parties needed to embark on a renewed push for reform of party funding. Cameron said there should be a £50,000 cap on donations. "I am ready to impose a cap on individual political donations of £50,000, without any further need for state funding. But to be fair this must apply equally to trade unions as well as private citizens. We could do that tomorrow, and take the big money out of British politics once and for all," he said.
Straw rejected this, telling The World at One: "I noticed that Mr Cameron said he would be happy with a donation cap of £50,000. I am not surprised because all the modelling shows that if you have a cap of £50,000 this hugely biases the funding system in favour of the Conservatives. If you are going to have a cap it must be lower."
Tony Blair's former chief fundraiser, Lord Levy, who called for private meetings at Downing Street to be revealed, said he was not aware of any such meetings having taken place at No 10 or Chequers when Blair was prime minister.
Maude caused some alarm in No 10 when he dismissed the significance of the Downing Street dinners in his early morning radio interview. He told Today: "This is a bit of a nonsense, this obsession with the fact that … someone like Michael Spencer – who has been treasurer of the party, who is a personal friend of the prime minister and the prime minister's wife – may have gone to supper at the prime minister's expense in his private residence, which happens to be in Downing Street.
"The fact that that happens does not mean that what you get as a donor to the party is the ability to be invited to Downing Street as a guest of the prime minister."
Earlier, Maude told ITV's Daybreak: "The key thing to say about Peter Cruddas is that actually what he was saying was both wrong and not true … No one in the treasurer's department knew he was having that meeting and actually we are pretty meticulous about doing these things properly.
"He had been told that there are very strict rules around how you raise money and he was off on a bit of private enterprise there."
Levy told Today that Blair, who faced allegations that the Formula One boss, Bernie Ecclestone, had sought to influence policy in 1997, had not to his knowledge met fundraisers at No 10 or Chequers.
"Until there is a change in the system, this is going to continually happen in one form or another. I do not really want to personalise this but one has to say that a party cannot have their policy directorate open," he said.
"Any meetings that are held must be disclosed. I certainly never gave any form of access to policy. That was something that was absolutely banned."
Cross-party talks on the funding of political parties, which were due to start in a few weeks, have been brought forward to this week.
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