The Royal British Legion’s chief has defended the charity’s acceptance of a sizeable donation from former Prime Minister Tony Blair, saying that rejecting the gift would have brought at least as much controversy as accepting it.

Chris Simpkins, director-general of the Royal British Legion, told The Times newspaper that acceptance of the gift - the proceeds and advance from Blair’s soon-to-be published memoirs - did not indicate that the charity endorsed the former PM’s politics.

The announcement last week that Blair would be directing the proceeds and advance from the book 'A Journey' (the advance said to be £4.6m) to the building of a new rehabilitation facility by veterans’ charity has prompted debate, but Simpkins said that the charity was in an “almost no win situation”.

“To have rejected it, I think, was likely to have stimulated equally adverse publicity,” he told the newspaper.

“What drives us in accepting this donation – aware obviously of the concerns which widows and the families of those who have been seriously wounded, indeed the wounded themselves might have – is, well, given that we need to support that group of people, wouldn’t it be a bit churlish of us to look a gift horse in the mouth?”

Simpkins also reiterated the charity’s non-partisan stance. “We don’t take a view on the political decisions which put our people in harm’s way,” he said.