Political

Election expense claims against Jo Swinson fall apart under police scrutiny

What is becoming a pattern of complaints about the expenses of Scottish Liberal Democrats being followed by the police finding nothing wrong is in the news again with the clearing of Jo Swinson:

Police have dropped their inquiry into Liberal Democrat deputy leader Jo Swinson’s general election expenses after being “unable to establish criminality”…

The allegations centred on leaflets that the Lib Dens said were not delivered, so should not count towards election spending limits…

A Police Scotland spokeswoman confirmed that the force was now concluding its inquiries after failing to find any criminality.

Welcoming the announcement, a Lib Dem spokesman said: “Instead of having the good grace to accept the election result, the SNP have shown a remarkable lack of respect for the choice that people in East Dunbartonshire made at the general election last year. [BBC]

That undelivered leaflets do not count against constituency election expense limits is now a well-established feature of the system. This case does not add to that knowledge, though it does highlight how useful it can be to document properly the number of undelivered leaflets disposed of after a contest. My advice on this is always to have more than one person count and check those leaflets – so you have multiple witnesses – and to take photographs before sending the leaflets off to recycling – so you also have documentary proof.

One response to “Election expense claims against Jo Swinson fall apart under police scrutiny”

  1. A point that should be made to all leaflet deliverers – I live in a rural area and it was difficult to find some of the dwellings and others had signs up voting for our local member of the squirearchy – so there were about 10% left over

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