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Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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?????????????????????????????????????????????????Thursday, May 11, 2017
No charges for Tories over Battlebus 2015 election expenses investigation
Conservative
MPs and agents will face no charges over election expenses allegations
relating to the party’s 2015 Battlebus campaign, the Crown Prosecution
Service has said.
The CPS said:
“We reviewed the files in accordance with the Code for Crown
Prosecutors and have concluded the tests in the Code are not met and no
criminal charges have been authorised.”
Prosecutors are still considering whether they will pursue charges
relating to one file from Kent Police, understood to relate to Craig
Mackinlay who was elected as MP for South Thanet in 2015.
Fleet of coaches
The allegations were highlighted by a year-long Channel 4 News
investigation into the accuracy of election expenses returns, including
the Conservative Party’s ‘Battlebus’ campaign, which used a fleet of
coaches to parachute volunteer activists into 29 key marginal
constituencies in the final ten days of the election campaign.
Nick Vamos, CPS Head of Special Crime, said: “We have considered files
of evidence from 14 police forces in respect of allegations relating to
Conservative Party candidates’ expenditure during the 2015 General
Election campaign.
“We considered whether candidates and election agents working in
constituencies that were visited by the Party’s ‘Battle Bus’ may have
committed a criminal offence by not declaring related expenditure on
their local returns.
“Instead, as the Electoral Commission found in its report, these costs were recorded as national expenditure by the Party.
‘Unfounded complaints’
Conservative Party Chairman Patrick McLoughlin said in a statement:
“These were the politically motivated and unfounded complaints that have
wasted police time.”
“After a very thorough investigation, we are pleased that the legal
authorities have confirmed what we believed was the case all along: that
these Conservative candidates did nothing wrong,” he said.
He also said that the party has sought to “strengthen election rules to
safeguard electoral integrity – in light of the real and proven cases of
electoral fraud exposed in Tower Hamlets in 2015”.
The CPS said: “Although there is evidence to suggest the returns may
have been inaccurate, there is insufficient evidence to prove to the
criminal standard that any candidate or agent was dishonest”
“The Act also makes it a technical offence for an election agent to fail
to deliver a true return. By omitting any ‘Battle Bus’ costs, the
returns may have been inaccurate. However, it is clear agents were told
by Conservative Party headquarters that the costs were part of the
national campaign and it would not be possible to prove any agent acted
knowingly or dishonestly.”
Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn said that he was “interested and
surprised” by the CPS decision, and would examine the detail of it.
“Our election laws must be enforced and must be adhered to, there are
strict spending limits for a reason, so that money can’t buy power, only
votes in the ballet box should be able to get power.”
Kent Police
The CPS are still considering whether to pursue charges regarding one
file received from Kent Police, understood to relate to Craig Mackinlay,
who was elected MP for South Thanet in 2015.
The Conservative Party has said that all local spending was filed in accordance with the law.
These allegations still under consideration were revealed by Channel 4 News and investigated over the past year.
“One file, from Kent Police, was only recently received by the CPS, and
remains under consideration,” said Nick Vamos, CPS Head of Special
Crime.
“No inference as to whether any criminal charge may or may not be
authorised in relation to this file should be drawn from this fact and
we will announce our decision as soon as possible once we have
considered the evidence in this matter.”
Electoral Commission report
In March, the Conservative Party was fined a record £70,000 and its
former treasurer reported to the police following a report by the
Electoral Commission into its national election expenses.
Today, Karl McCartney, on behalf of Conservative MPs concerned, called on the bosses of the Electoral Commission to resign.
He said it was “politically motivated and biased” and that “no doubt my
colleagues who have been victims of the Electoral Commission’s
witch-hunt, will take every opportunity after the General Election to
persuade the newly-elected government to abolish this incompetent
organisation”.
The Electoral Commission’s investigation and report into the
Conservative party’s national spending – launched after a series of
reports by Channel 4 News over the past year – found “significant
failures by the party” to report spending in the 2015 General Election
and in three by-elections in 2014.
The Electoral Commission today said that the CPS decision is “consistent
with that of the Commission, which concluded that the Conservative
Party’s spending return was incomplete and inaccurate, as it contained
spending that should have been included in the candidates’ return”.