The Labour party has been forced to turn to the country's biggest trade unions for a bale-out of £500,000 to plug a hole in its finances and avert a funding crisis, the Financial Times has learnt.

In a sign of Labour's growing dependence on its traditional union backers in the wake of the cash-for-peerages row, senior party figures have revealed that a secret plea was made by the leadership in recent weeks for emergency funding. The union rescue package is designed to shore up the party's cashflow as it struggles with the costs of a heavy round of redundancies and demands for loan repayments from two business tycoons.