Labour top election spending league

Labour were the biggest spenders in the two Monklands constituencies during the campaign for June’s snap general election.

Expense returns show the campaign for winning Coatbridge candidate Hugh Gaffney totalled £ 8588, compared to the £3402 spent by the SNP’s Phil Boswell.

In neighbouring Airdrie & Shotts Labour candidate Helen McFarlane’s campaign came in at £4655 while the spend for Neil Gray, who retained the seat for the SNP, was £2980.

Both winning candidates made use of Facebook adverts. Mr Gaffney’s campaign used two promotional posts on the social media site at a combined cost of £740 while Mr Gray’s campaign spent just over £60 on two posts.

None of the candidates in either seat came close to the spending limits of more than £14,000 per candidate for Airdrie & Shotts and nearly £13,000 in Coatbridge, Chryston & Bellshill.

The figures, contained in official spending returns, show the majority of candidates’ resources went on traditional “unsolicited material to voters”.

In Coatbridge, where Mr Gaffney won the seat back for Labour two years after the SNP’s triumph there, the Labour campaign spent £ 5855, while the SNP campaign spent £2761 on Mr Boswell’s election address and mailshots.

Mr Gray’s re-election in Airdrie included spending of £2495 on three sets of materials for voters while all but £51 of the expenses for Ms McFarlane, who reduced the sitting MP’s majority to just 196, was spent in the same category, including a direct mail, election address and five sets of flyers.

The Airdrie Conservative campaign for Jennifer Donnellan cost £1196, of which £1031 was on material to electors, while party colleague Robyn Halbert’s return for Coatbridge shows £808 of the £948 being spent in the same way.

Liberal Democrats recorded spending of £44 in each of the two constituencies for party digital services for candidates Ewan McRobert and David Bennie.