Thursday, May 12, 2016

Electoral Commission takes Tories to High Court over election spending scandal

From the Mirror website today:
The Electoral Commission are taking the Tories to the High Court to force them to reveal documents detailing the spending on Battle Buses ahead of the 2015 general election. 
The Commission have already asked the Tories twice for the documents, but they have only provided "limited" disclosure. 
Political parties have a legal obligation to provide full spending disclosures to the Commission on request.
Later...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

First, see today's Metro where a CCHQ source makes clear they are co-operating with the Electoral Commission and that there was no need for the EC to go to the High Court as the documents they wanted have always been made available.

Second, one has to wonder why all this now. "Team2015" was not some secret campaign kept hush-hush. Full details of what was happening was always out in public. Guido Fawkes (for all its crass tedium) ran stories of Tory youngsters being treated to curries, discos and hotels (and the bed hopping therein). Why did no one complain at the time?

Jonathan Calder said...

No one complained at the time because returns of expenses are not made until after the election.

However, scepticism was expressed at the Newark by-election in 2014:

"At the election count both the Ukip leader Nigel Farage and the Liberal Democrat contender David Watts expressed strong doubts about whether the huge Conservative campaign, which was one of the strongest mounted by the party in many years, had stuck within the official £100,000 limit.

"Mr Watts, who came sixth in Newark, with just 1,004 votes, estimated, in an interview with Channel 4 News, that the Conservatives really spent around £250,000 in achieving their victory."