MP is cleared over election as Tory official convicted

A SENIOR Conservative Party official who falsified election expenses was “carried away by her conviction” that defeating thenUkip leader Nigel Farage was an “overwhelmingly important political objective”, a judge has said.

Marion Little, 63, was convicted in the trial of Tory MP Craig Mackinlay, inset, who was acquitted of breaking electoral rules in his 2015 South Thanet campaign against Mr Farage.

Qualified accountant Mr Mackinlay described the prosecution as “nearly three years of pure hell” and said he had “extreme concerns” about the clarity of election law after the trial concluded at Southwark Crown Court yesterday.

“I await a statement from the Electoral Commission, the CPS and Kent Police as to how they justify millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money in pursuing me in a political show trial,” he said.

Prosecutors said more than £60,000 in staffing, hotels and advertising went undeclared in the battle for the Kent constituency.

Little, who has worked for the party since 1974, was handed a nine-month suspended jail sentence and ordered to pay £5,000 towards the “very substantial” prosecution costs.

The trial judge Mr Justice Edis said the only reason she was not going to prison immediately was because she is caring for her husband, who is gravely-ill with cancer. Her conviction came after the jury was told “the law was simply abandoned” as the Tories set out to ensure victory and fend off the challenge of Mr Farage.

Little’s offending was enabled in part by an “inadequate level of supervision of her work” by the central Conservative Party headquarters, the judge said, which he described as having “a culture of convenient self-deception and lack of clarity about what was permissible in law and what was not”. He made clear that the evidence showed it was Little alone who was aware of the specific deceptions taking place.

Election agent Nathan Gray, 29, from Hawkhurst, Kent, was earlier acquitted of making a false election expenses declaration.

Mr Mackinlay’s election victory could have been declared void had the true circumstances been known, prosecutors said.

But a jury acquitted him of two charges of knowingly making a false election expenses declaration under the Representation of the People Act 1983 after deliberating for 53 hours and 29 minutes, having retired on December 5.