Political

Why did Kirklees Council pay for this letter promoting a Labour candidate?

Consider a letter which starts:

Dear Fellow Residents

Working for you all year round

The communities that make up Greenhead Ward deserve a team of experienced, hard working and effective Councillors, who will represent you and always put your interests first. As your Labour team in Greenhead Ward, we endeavour to work all year round on the issues that affect you and are a priority for the local communities.

A fairly standard piece of election direct mail you might think. Substitute a word or two here or there and it could easily be a letter from pretty much any party in any part of the country.

Except that this letter was produced, paid for and posted out by Kirklees Council, date stamped 18 April – and yes, the ward had an election on 1 May in which one of the three Labour councillors was up for election.

Not really appropriate don’t you think?

You can see the full item for yourself:

Kirklees Letter Promoting Labour Candidate Page 1

Kirklees Letter Promoting Labour Candidate Page 2

This leaves some interesting legal questions. As the letter is from the Labour candidate (and two colleagues), complete with their signature and two photos of them, it would be hard to argue that the Labour candidate didn’t know about the letter. So will the letter appear in their election expense return? And as it was paid for by the council, will the costs appear as a donation in kind from the council on their expense return too? This could be a fun set of paperwork to read in a few weeks…

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