Tory leader David Cameron has said Gordon Brown's personal integrity is on the line after his general election fundraiser admitted knowing of the secret channels used by a millionaire property developer to give cash to Labour.
Jon Mendelsohn, appointed as director of general election resources in September, said in a statement that he wrote to developer David Abrahams last week.
Mr Mendelsohn said his aim was to stop the practice of using proxy donors, described by Mr Brown himself as "unlawful". But the party's chief fundraiser did not inform Labour's national executive, the party leadership, the Electoral Commission or the police once he had uncovered the funding trail.
Mr Cameron told MPs: "The Prime Minister's whole explanation beggars belief. This goes to questions of the Prime Minister's own integrity.
"Does he really expect us to believe that someone who even his own side say is a control freak was preparing for an election, sorting out the finances and sitting round a table with everyone caught up in this scandal and yet didn't have the first idea what was going on?
"We have had 155 days of this Government. We have had disaster after disaster - a run on a bank, half the country's details lost in the post and now this.
"His excuses go from incompetence to complacency and there are questions about his integrity.
"Aren't people rightly now asking: Is this man simply not cut out for the job?"
Lib Dem acting leader Vince Cable mocked Mr Brown to MPs, saying the premier had suffered a "remarkable transformation in the last few weeks from Stalin to Mr Bean, creating chaos out of order rather than order out of chaos".
Liberal Democrat leadership contender Chris Huhne said later he had written to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair asking him to investigate, but Scotland Yard said they had yet to receive a formal complaint.
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