Political

Police “formally considering” allegations over Conservative Party’s 2017 general election campaign

Labour MP Wayne David revealed in Parliament this week that the police are “formally considering” investigating the Conservative Party’s 2017 election campaign for illegal activities following a Channel 4 investigation:

Mr David said the Electoral Commission had written to him confirming the police were “formally considering the allegations”.

An undercover investigation by C4 News, broadcast last month, claimed call centre workers may have been carrying out paid canvassing, banned under electoral law, as they promoted key Conservative messages to undecided voters in the weeks before the election. [BBC]

Channel 4 first aired the results of its investigations in June, which included an undercover reporter working at the call centre in question:

The Conservative Party contracted a secretive call centre during the election campaign which may have broken data protection and election laws, a Channel 4 News investigation has found…

These allegations include:

  • Paid canvassing on behalf of Conservative election candidates – banned under election law.
  • Political cold calling to prohibited [i.e. TPS registered] numbers
  • Misleading calls claiming to be from an ‘independent market research company’ which does not apparently exist.

Investigations into the Conservative Party’s 2015 general election campaign found repeated law-breaking, resulting in a record-breaking fine. In addition, a Conservative MP and two senior officials are currently being prosecuted for allegedly breaking the law.

2 responses to “Police “formally considering” allegations over Conservative Party’s 2017 general election campaign”

    • Different in multiple ways Will, such as: (a) the calling wasn’t from Egypt (there’s a stray 0 in that number, without it you’ll see it’s a normal UK number); (b) data protection rules were followed; (c) the media hasn’t published a set of allegations of law breaking. Casually confusing serious allegations of systematic law breaking with people not liking being run just gives cover to those who don’t take the law seriously. (BTW my tip if you don’t like being rung is to answer the phone and tell the person that or otherwise contact the organisation; simply not answering the phone means the people making the call don’t know that you don’t want to be called again.)

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