Mayoral campaign spending limit urged as Tories splash out £1m
MAYORAL election campaigns should have strict spending limits to prevent the likes of the £1 million spent by the Tories in the region, the Green Party has claimed.
They were responding after it was revealed that Conservative candidate Andy Street had raised and spent most of a £1 million war chest before spending limits came in at the end of March.
During the final six weeks of campaigning up to the May 4 vote, known as the short campaign, candidates have a strict spending limit of just under £130,000 – but unlike other elections there is no limit before that.
The £1 million fund, raised from donations, paid for hundreds of thousands of leaflets and letters sent to voters, a glitzy manifesto launch and a campaign team.
It dwarfed the amounts spent by his five rivals for the West Midlands Mayor election.
Green candidate James Burn said one household he knew had received nine different pieces of Tory campaign literature – but he laid the blame squarely at the government election authorities.
He said: “What I am surprised about is the frankly bizarre and puzzling choice of the powers-that-be not to regulate campaign spending for this mayoral campaign the way they do for the General Election.
“For a General Election, the amount of money you can spend in the months preceding is strictly limited. We had all assumed, as this is a bigger election, the same would be true for the mayoral election.
“We were a little shocked when we found out spending would only be regulated for the last six weeks. It’s clear from the amount of advertising that Andy’s Conservative campaign has taken advantage of this.”
He added: “If there is a Conservative mayor, it won’t be about which candidate was most qualified, or had the best policies, but which party had the deepest pockets and was able to take advantage of the very troubling lack of limits to spending for this election.
“The question voters in a region where one in three children live in poverty should be asking, is why those who have donated to the Conservative campaign are willing to give so much money to see a Conservative mayor, and what those donors think they’ll get in return.”