Can Conservatives buy your vote?

9.42.00am GMT Tue 2nd Mar 2010

Lorely

Conservatives always spend more on elections than the other parties. This is clearly a legitimate and successful tactic for them. The Lib Dems have less to spend but try to compensate by work on the ground from a team of volunteers.

The Ashcroft cash has been going into marginal seats - again a sensible tactic within the corrupted British system where the election will be decided only by a small proportion of electors in those constituencies.

The seat with the biggest cash input is Solihull, an affluent suburb of Birmingham which used to be a safe Conservative seat until Lorely Burt took it for the Lib Dems.

Lorely is fighting back by asking the people of Solihull not to be bought.

Commenting on the news that the Ashcroft-funded Conservative Party has donated £55,700 to the Solihull election campaign, more than any other seat in the UK, Solihull MP Lorely Burt said:

"Solihull is not for sale. The voters cannot be bought, even if Ashcroft's Conservatives give the Solihull campaign more money than any other seat in the UK.

"The Conservatives have evaded questions about Ashcroft's tax status for years. We now know the truth - he does not pay tax on his worldwide earnings in the UK and has avoided paying up to £127m in tax.

"It has taken a decade for him to finally admit he is not a permanent resident, the very condition he agreed to in order to become a Peer.

"The Conservatives think they can throw money from Belize at Solihull and buy the seat. They clearly under-estimate the people of Solihull who know the Tories are trying to airbrush their record of pandering to the super-rich and ignoring everyone else."

Ashcroft is estimated by the Sunday Times "Rich list" to have a fortune of £1,100 million.

At a conservative estimate, the financial return on Ashcroft's fortune will be 5 per cent a year or some £55 million.

If 80 per cent is held offshore, the tax savings are as follows assuming that there is a split of fifty-fifty between Capital Gains Tax (on capital gains) and income tax (on interest, profits and dividends).

This is a saving of 18%CGT on £22m or £3.96m, plus a saving of 40 per cent income tax on £22m or £8.8m. The total tax saving annually is thus £12.76 million.