The need of political parties to raise large sums from private donors has long been the Achilles’ heel of British politics. Few leaders, of whatever party, really enjoy being wheeled out to press the flesh with wealthy strangers or passing acquaintances. They do it because they have to.

Most individual donors want and expect a degree of personal access to senior politicians of the party to which they are being asked to write a large cheque. Such access need not be sinister: people give money to organisations for varied and sometimes complex reasons, but generally want to feel valued and their support will make a difference.

The reason party fundraising remains an issue of such sensitivity is that voters themselves have conflicting views. Ask a sample of the electorate if our political parties should take big sums from a few millionaires and they will say no, but ask them if they, as taxpayers, should contribute more towards the running costs of party politics to make up the shortfall and they will give an equally emphatic no.

Labour’s sweeping overhaul of the legal framework for political donations in 2000 was intended to restore public confidence, in addition to its political subtext of seeking to close off future backing for the Tories from supporters overseas.

Labour had suffered funding rows of its own - the row over Bernie Ecclestone’s £1 million donation was among the first to tarnish Tony Blair’s image with voters - but the calculation was always that the Tories stood to lose more.

Ironically, it has been Labour that was most beset by financial scandals since, some unearthed thanks to the legal duty to register all significant donations and others owing to a failure or refusal to do so.

The cash-for-honours inquiry after peerages were offered to supporters who made secret loans, and the continuing policy investigation into the use by David Abrahams, a property developer, of intermediaries to channel £600,000 to Labour, arose only because of the legal changes pushed through by the party.

The Conservatives used secret seven-figure loans from supporters to underwrite their 2005 election campaign while circumventing the law on political donations. The Liberal Democrats, too, undermined their attempts to seek the moral high ground by accepting £2.4 million from Michael Brown, a Majorca-based trader who was later jailed for two years for perjury and a passport offence.

Many Labour MPs now want Gordon Brown to go further, limiting spending by parties across Parliament to hinder the Conservatives’ increasingly effective constituency-level campaigning, plus limits on individual donations. But without David Cam-eron’s backing for another attempt to change the law, Labour must revert to rattling its tin at wealthy supporters rather than the taxpayer.

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