The Conservative leadership is today accused of being “evasive and obfuscatory” over the tax status of Lord Ashcroft, the party’s deputy chairman and biggest donor, in a ruling by the information commissioner that sharply criticises the secrecy over where he is resident for tax purposes.

The Cabinet Office has been ordered to reveal within 35 days the nature of the undertaking Ashcroft made to become domiciled in the UK when he became a peer in 2000. The move follows an appeal spanning three years through the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) by the Labour MP Gordon Prentice.

Ashcroft made a promise to become a permanent resident of the UK as a condition of his ennoblement in 2000, a year after he was rejected as a member of the Lords by the political honours scrutiny committee, a rejection he believed was partly based on his residency at the time.

But successive Conservative leaders have since refused to reveal whether he has fulfilled that promise and taken up UK residency. The Cabinet Office, which oversees the peerage system, has declined to reveal what his undertaking involved, citing Ashcroft’s privacy and clauses in the Freedom of Information Act that exempt the honours system from scrutiny.

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“Lord Ashcroft could have ended the speculation about his residency by making a public statement to that effect. He has chosen not to do this. He has furthered the speculation by stating that it is a private matter and, as stated on his website, ‘If home is where the heart is Belize is my home‘. Source: Polly Curtis, The Guardian.

If Ashcroft was a UK resident he would have said so by now.

To avoid further embarrassing questions I suspect the Information Commissioner’s Office will be of the first cost savings Cameron will be making.