The Co-operative Bank approved more than £1 million of fresh lending to the Labour Party within weeks of Ed Miliband meeting Paul Flowers, according to the Electoral Commission.
The scandal about Mr Flowers’s hard drug parties at a time when the bank came close to collapse has put the Labour Party’s financial deals with the Co-operative movement under scrutiny. The party has been heavily reliant on generous lending from the bank since Tony Blair’s first government.
The Labour Party has said that Mr Miliband had a one-to-one meeting with Mr Flowers on March 6 to discuss banking reform. The party declined to comment on whether the lending was discussed at the meeting because the encounter was a private one.
On April 1, Labour was given