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A green energy tycoon who plans to donate £5mn to the UK’s Labour party has been ordered by the High Court to inform his wife before he hands over more cash.
Lawyers acting for Dale Vince’s wife, Kate, claimed during divorce proceedings that the businessman had kept her “in the dark” about his plans to fund the opposition party with donations from shared assets.
“This lack of visibility is quite frankly appalling,” her barrister, Richard Todd KC, told the court at a hearing this week. “That money is being disposed of and it’s being kept invisible from us.”
Vince, founder of energy company Ecotricity and owner of the football club Forest Green Rovers, has an estimated fortune of £100mn and is one of Labour’s “megadonors” seeking to bankroll Sir Keir Starmer’s bid for power.
Starmer has looked to Vince, along with two other big donors — supermarket scion Lord David Sainsbury and car glass repair millionaire Gary Lubner — to help fund his party after the Conservative government raised the spending limit for this year’s election to £35mn, up from £19mn in 2019.
Mr Justice Cusworth, the judge in the Vinces’ divorce case, this week lifted some of the standard restrictions on reporting and allowed the parties to be named following public interest representations from the Financial Times.
The judge ordered that the 62-year-old give his wife written notice of any intention to make a donation either directly or indirectly “through any entity in which he has an interest”.
Mr Justice Cusworth said he was only making a “notice provision” to ensure Vince’s wife was kept informed, not an “injunctive provision” to restrict donations.
But Kate Vince’s solicitor Simon Bruce, a partner at Dawson Cornwell, said an application could be made in future to try to stop Dale Vince donating “what we don’t want him to donate”.
Vince has given £2.4mn to the Labour party through Ecotricity over the past decade and has donated much smaller gifts to the Green party and the Liberal Democrats.
He has increased the donations to Labour recently, handing over £500,000 in October 2022 and £1mn in November 2023, according to data from the Electoral Commission.
Party officials expect to receive further millions before the general election expected this year.
Vince is now required to inform his wife of “the precise sum of money or value of the asset he intends to donate” and the date and purpose of the proposed donation, as well as the recipient.
Lewis Marks KC, for the businessman, told the court before the order was issued that his client had already made clear his intention to donate £5mn to Labour and there was no need for further notice to be given.
Vince would be disclosing any donations “publicly anyway — as he already has, and as he always does”, Marks said. “If the wife thinks she can get an injunction to restrain him [from funding the Labour party] . . . then she should make that application,” he added.
In court documents, Marks said Dale Vince would make the donations “because he believes that an incoming Labour government would be best for the country and best for the environment — to which he has devoted his entire adult life”.
“It is not for [Kate Vince], or this court, to second-guess that type of decision,” he said.
But Todd said in a written submission on behalf of Kate Vince: “He [Vince] needs to accept that this will come out of his share and that he will give us notice of any future large-scale donations.”