Row over canvassing expenses

CONCERNS have been expressed about campaign spending by the Conservative Party in two Welsh marginal seats during the run-up to the 2015 general election.

The online left wing magazine The Canary has suggested that telephone canvassing carried out on behalf of the party in Cardiff North and Gower should have counted towards local campaign spending rather than national campaign spending.

The concerns raised in The Canary suggest that payments made to a Neath-based firm called Blue Telecoms should have counted to the local expenses of successful 2015 candidates Craig Williams in Cardiff North and Byron Davies in Gower.

Altogether, Blue Telecoms was paid more than £250,000 by the Conservative Party, with all the money declared as national expenditure.

But a Linked In posting by Blue Telecoms chief executive Sascha Lopex said: “Blue Telecoms were originally approached by the Conservative Party to help with a small number of local campaigns in south Wales, including Gower and Cardiff North.

“Quickly, it was realised that the power, flexibility and affordability of Blue Telecoms could help on a much larger scale. We ran a 100 seat call centre, and contacted people in key constituencies to complete surveys.”

Cardiff University academic Dr Dafydd Jones remembers being called by a phone canvasser in the latter stages of the 2015 campaign. He said: “To me it appeared to be a canvassing call on behalf of Craig which I did not think was unsurprising at the time given the marginal nature of the seat. It is only when I followed the expenses link on the Canary article that I saw telecanvassing was not included as a local campaign charge in Craig’s costings for the 2015 campaign.”

Mr Williams said: “We had party volunteers who did telephone canvassing and we made no secret of that at the time.

“It wouldn’t have said telecanvassing on the expenses return, but would have been down as election expenses. I don’t know anything about national campaign spend in 2015.

“You’ll have to ask the party centrally about that.”

The Conservative party was asked to provide this information but was unable to do so.