HOW HYPOCRITICAL!
Brexit group faces police probe for £70,000 overspend even though £9million of taxpayers’ cash went on a pro-EU leaflet
A PRO-BREXIT group yesterday claimed it was the victim of bias after it was reported to the police for over- spending by £ 70,000 ahead of the EU referendum.
Leave. EU, the unofficial Leave campaign, threatened to take the Electoral Commission to court as it was issued with a record fine and told its chief executive could face criminal prosecution.
The group, set up by businessman Arron Banks and linked to former Ukip leader Nigel Farage, branded the watchdog’s investigation a ‘joke’ and said it had ‘fired an arrow into the wall and painted a target around the arrow’.
The Electoral Commission already faces accusations of bias from Brexiteers, who claim it is focusing on allegations of wrongdoing by the Leave side.
Former prime minister David Cameron’s decision to spend £9.3million of taxpayers’ money on a Remain leaflet sent to all households has been deemed within the referendum rules. In April 2016, two months before the vote, the Commission designated a lead campaign group on each side, with a spending limit of £7million for campaigning. Other groups were limited to £700,000.
Leave. EU reported spending of £693,094, just below its permitted total.
But the Commission found that it failed to include at least £77,380 of additional spending, taking its total to 10 per cent above the limit. The Commission said the unlawful overspend ‘may well have been considerably higher’.
It also found ‘ reasonable’ grounds to suspect that Leave. EU’s chief executive Liz Bilney knowingly or recklessly signed a false spending declaration.
The watchdog has referred her to the Metropolitan Police.
Mr Banks yesterday branded the Commission’s announcement as a ‘politically-motivated attack on Brexit and the 17.4million people who defied the establishment’. He added: ‘The Electoral Commission went big game fishing and found a few “aged” dead sardines on the beach. So much for the big conspiracy! What a shambles.’
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today the Commission was made up of ‘former MPs, liberal MPs, the SNP, former Labour leaders of councils, all sorts of people that all believe in Remain’. ‘We will be going to court to challenge this,’ he added.
Last month it emerged four of the watchdog’s nine commissioners publicly opposed Brexit. Electoral Commission chief Claire Bassett denied claims of bias made by Mr Banks, saying decisions by the watchdog’s directors were ‘based on robust evidence’. ‘It is quite clear those transaction returns contained inaccurate information about purported loans to Leave.EU and it contains significant errors about how money was spent. Money was missing and invoices were missing,’ she added. The £70,000 fine matches the watchdog’s biggest financial censure, handed to the Tories in March 2017 for offences in the 2015 general election campaign and by-elections in 2014. A probe into group spending Vote Leave by continues, official Leave the Commission said. ÷Downing Street rejected criticism from Sir John Major after he claimed there was ‘ no sensible alternative’ to the customs union. The former prime minister said a physical border in Northern Ireland ‘ seems unavoidable’ unless the UK stays in the trading bloc and that ‘not all’ goods could be cleared in a ‘frictionless way’. But in response a Downing Street spokesman said: ‘ We are leaving the customs union.’
‘Politically motivated’