Following a Channel 4 News investigation the Conservative Party have admitted their failure to declare tens of thousands of pounds of election expenses.
The Conservative Party have admitted that £38,000 of costs associated with their BattleBus2015 campaign weren’t declared to the Electoral Commission due to an “administrative error”. They claim that the administrative error lead to the cost of buses themselves being declared, but not the associated accommodation costs of the activists.
Election expenses
The Conservative Party also claim that due to the BattleBus2015 being a national campaign, the costs associated with it should be put on the national return. However critics of this position say that any local campaigning for a particular candidate in a particular constituency should go on the constituency expenses return.
This is one area where the Conservatives could find themselves in some difficulty. Nationally they were several million pounds under the election expenses threshold. In some of the marginal constituencies where the BattleBus2015 team campaigned, however, they were a lot closer to the threshold.
If it is ruled that the expenses should have put on the local constituency expenses return then it could put a number of Conservative MPs in marginal constituencies where the BattleBus2015 campaigned in the position of having gone over their expenses limit.
How many Conservative MPs potentially failed to declare local campaign spending? #ElectionExpenses pic.twitter.com/zAzq1jtL4c
— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) April 21, 2016
The electoral commission are currently investigating what action, if any, should be taken.
UPDATE 28th April:
The electoral commission has requested an extension to their investigation of electoral spending.
The Electoral Commission has today (28 April) announced that as part of the investigation launched on 18 February 2016 into Conservative Party campaign spending returns, it has requested that the Crown (CPS) Prosecution Service and the police consider applying for an extension to the time limit available to pursue criminal prosecutions.
Representatives of the CPS, the Police and the Electoral Commission are meeting on Wednesday 4 May to discuss this request. The final decision to apply for an extension will rest with the police and the CPS.