Zameer Choudrey, chief executive of Bestway, is made a CBE in the New Year Honours

The boss of a cash-and-carry firm which donated nearly half a million pounds to the Conservative Party is to be made a CBE in the New Year Honours.

Zameer Choudrey is chief executive of Bestway, the country’s second largest cash-and-carry group and has an estimated personal fortune of £975million.

The 57-year-old was given the honour for ‘services to the UK wholesale industry and charity in the UK and abroad’. 

But it is bound to spark controversy because the firm he works for is a major financial backer of the Tories.

The New Year Honours list also includes gongs for a string of current and failed politicians, cronies and advisers.

Ed Davey, the former Lib Dem energy and climate change secretary, is given a knighthood for ‘political and public service’.

He lost his Kingston and Surbiton seat in the election and has since taken up a series of lucrative consultancies in the energy sector.

While leading the energy department, he enraged the Tories by embracing onshore wind farms and other forms of ‘green’ energy.

He once described climate change sceptics as ‘wilfully ignorant, head-in-the-sand nimbys’. Only last month he boasted of overseeing a ‘trebling of the UK’s renewable power capacity’.

David Cameron’s Australian election guru Lynton Crosby is given a knighthood for ‘political service’. As the Conservatives’ campaign director, he masterminded their first outright election win in two decades.

• 
  Tainted New Year Honours: Gongs for sex shop queen, boss of…
  
  
  From drum and bass DJ Goldie who was raised in the care…
  
• 
  Porn baron’s daughter who turned sex shops to gold: Ann…
  

When details of the honour first emerged on Sunday, critics accused the Prime Minister of ‘doling out’ honours to his friends.

Labour MP John Mann said the award was an ‘insult’, adding: ‘We can all think of hundreds of people who were very deserving but did not receive an honour, but now this political apparatchik from Australia has got one … It’s tawdry.’

The Bestway conglomerate was founded by Mr Choudrey’s uncle Sir Anwar Perez, and started life as a corner shop in the 1960s.

Guru: Australian Lynton Crosby is pictured with David Cameron after winning the 2015 General Election in May

It is now a company with a multibillion-pound turnover which owns pharmacies in the UK, a cement manufacturer and major bank in Pakistan. Bestway is Britain’s second-largest cash-and-carry group and also owns 800 pharmacies it bought from the Co-op.

Electoral Commission records suggest Bestway Cash and Carry and linked companies have given the Tories some £483,000 since 2010, including around £100,000 in the past 12 months.

Another Tory donor, Christopher Fenwick, a member of the wealthy retail family, is made an MBE for political service. He was previously a deputy chairman of a secretive private club called the United and Cecil Club which channelled hundreds of thousands of pounds into the Conservative Party.

He has also sponsored tables at Tory Party fundraiser events.

Tory MP Henry Bellingham is given a knighthood for ‘political and parliamentary service’. An MP since 1983, his only brush with ministerial office was an 18-month stint as a junior Foreign Office minister after the 2010 election.

During the expenses scandal, it emerged he had claimed £1,500 mortgage interest per month for a flat in London, with claims totalling £85,845 over four years.

David Cameron’s former election guru, Australian Lynton Crosby (pictured), was awarded a knighthood

Rosie Winterton, Labour MP for Doncaster Central and Chief Whip of the Opposition, is made a dame for political and parliamentary service.

Other Labour recipients are Ayesha Hazarika, ex-chief of staff to former Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman, and Gregory Cook, the party’s former polling strategist, who both become MBEs.

Antonia Williams, the former deputy head of Mr Cameron’s policy unit, is made an OBE for public service. The same honour goes to Marion Little, a Conservative Party official, for ‘political service’.

Dr Spencer Pitfield, the former director of the Tory National Policy Forum, was also made an OBE.

Sir Jonathan Stephens, chairman of the main honours committee, said there were only 26 recipients among the 1,200-strong list who had been recommended by the parliamentary and political service honours committee.

Asked if either committee considered issues such as donations to political parties, or Mr Crosby’s lobbying links, Sir Jonathan said: ‘There is a process of scrutiny of all the honours nominations for anything which might bring the honours system into disrepute, and that includes scrutiny of financial and tax affairs.’

Former climate change secretary Ed Davey (pictured), who lost his seat in May, was awarded a knighthood

÷ Secrecy measures surrounding the honours list are to be reviewed following the leaking of a series of high-profile names.

Awards for actress Barbara Windsor, jockey AP McCoy and election strategist Lynton Crosby were revealed in media reports before they were formally published.

Recipients usually learn they are to be honoured weeks before the list is made public, but are sworn to secrecy. However, recent years have seen a number of high-profile names revealed in advance, despite repeated promises of inquiries into how it happens.

Sir Jonathan Stephens, chairman of the main honours committee, said it was ‘disappointing’ that it had happened again this year. He said officials would review who received the list in advance of the formal announcement.