The woman who gave Labour election candidates in Thanet products donated by the high street chain Lush rather than to the charities they were for has apologised, saying she was ignorant of the law.

Yesterday, we reported how products that were meant to be sold to benefit the homeless and vulnerable were instead used to fund the party's election campaign.

Now, Jenny Mathias, a former member of the 1980s pop group the Belle Stars, wrote on a Facebook page that she had not realised the repercussions of giving the products for a political fundraising event.

In her capacity as a worker for the charity Food For All, she arranged for the products to be handed over to Labour candidate Karen Constantine, who is running for election in May's county council poll.

The products were then sold at a fund-raising event for Labour in Ramsgate - raising questions about whether the sale breached election rules around charities making donations to political parties.

On Facebook, she posted an entry headed "People make mistakes" saying: “I am fully to blame for giving to a group of people that happened to be Labour who in turn gave the proceeds to charities.”

She blamed ignorance of the rules on political donations for the error but insisted she had only acted in good faith.

She said: “I had not realised when giving this out that there would be prejudiced to some groups and indeed we are not allowed to do that as a charity and this was my mistake and my mistake only. I apologise to TKO for this genuine mistake and to Lush.”

TKO is the charity which was initially given the products by Lush which in turn then shared them between 38 other organisations, including Food for All.

The apology follows those issued by Karen Constantine, a Thanet councillor and fellow candidate Raushan Ara, who was not directly involved in the collection of the products. The money raised through the sale - £415 - is now being handed to three charities.

The saga has triggered calls for an inquiry by the former Thanet councillor Ian Driver, who has now registered complaints about the table sale with Thanet council's standards committee and the Electoral Commission.