Electoral Commission Investigation: Vote Leave

Pat McFadden Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

The report is clear that consequences do follow. The Electoral Commission has issued fines and referred both Vote Leave and the BeLeave founder to the police. That is what I refer to when I say that consequences and punishments are following.

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

I reported the leave campaign’s intentions to both the Electoral Commission and the police two-and-a-half years ago, and four months before the referendum itself. In February 2016, the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), who was then a leading figure in the leave campaign, wrote to colleagues saying:

“It is open to the Vote Leave family to create separate legal entities, each of which could spend £700,000: Vote Leave will be able to spend as much money as is necessary to win the referendum.”

The Electoral Commission’s rules are specifically designed to stop this kind of thing. It says that we should

“stop people getting around the spending limits by coordinating several campaigns at the same time.”

We have now established that spending limits were broken by the leave campaign precisely through separate legal entities following a common plan to get around the rules. Why is it that when such intent was reported four months before the referendum, it has taken two-and-a-half years to get to this conclusion? What does it say about the integrity of this result? Is it not ironic that the so-called people’s revolt against the elite was conspiring from the get-go to get around the rules with limitless money from goodness knows what source? Does the Minister not agree that this needs to be fully investigated to cleanse the cloud that has been cast over our democracy by these findings?

[Chloe Smith]

It is exactly the case that allegations of impropriety should be investigated. As I have said a number of times, it is that that means we have a robust democracy. I hear the right hon. Gentleman’s story. In part, I think it ends with this investigation. An investigation has been carried out, and it should be welcomed that it has been carried out and that it has found a result. If, on the other hand, his points are about the efficacy of the Electoral Commission—I think he was driving at the fact that it took two and half years—then that is a matter for Parliament. The Electoral Commission is accountable to Parliament through your Committee, Mr Speaker. It is indeed an independent regulator of Government, as it should be, and it is accountable to Parliament for how it conducts investigations and indeed whether it does so quickly enough.