So they cannot spend more than $66,307.90 on an election seat?
Wow.
““I await a statement from the Electoral Commission, the CPS and Kent police as to how they justify millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money in pursuing me in a political show trial,” he said.
Mr Justice Edis said yesterday that Little, of Ware, Hertfordshire, had been “carried away by her conviction” that defeating Mr Farage was an “overwhelmingly important political…”
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“R v MACKINLAY, GRAY AND LITTLE MR JUSTICE EDIS SOUTHWARK CROWN COURT 9th January 2019
Marion Little is a senior and respected employee of the Conservative Party at its Central Headquarters and has been so for many years. She was able to say that she has been a friend to Prime Ministers and other very senior political figures. She has now been convicted, on overwhelming evidence, of two very serious offences of deliberately exceeding the spending limit on the short campaign in South Thanet in 2015, and then creating dishonest documents to hide what she had done. That was the election when Craig Mackinlay defeated Nigel Farage. No-one can know whether her misconduct had any effect on the outcome of that election, but she plainly intended that it would.
Her offence is made worse by the fact that she created her dishonest documents and presented them to the candidate, Craig Mackinlay, and his Agent, Nathan Gray for signing. They did so in good faith, not knowing what she had done. This placed them at grave risk of conviction, and is a significant aggravating feature in her case.
The overspend was very substantial.
The law governing the maximum permitted amount which a candidate can spend, or which can be spent on behalf of a candidate, in a General Election exists to ensure a level playing field and also to limit the extent to which the electorate can be manipulated by costly and sophisticated systems designed to spread a message on behalf of a candidate in a Parliamentary election. Our laws relating to elections are important and must be respected. The law was passed by Parliament in the Representation of the People Act 1983 to protect democracy itself. The law is enforced by criminal offences which have been created in order to discourage people from breaking the law to try to win elections. This was done because Parliament decided that it was a necessary part of a system of free and fair elections. An election in a constituency selects a member of Parliament who becomes a member of the House of Commons which is the prime body responsible for making new laws in this country. The means by which our lawmakers are selected is part of the rule of law itself.
Marion Little acted dishonestly by preparing returns which she knew were neither complete nor accurate and which falsely showed that the sum spent on the 2015 General Election short campaign in South Thanet was less than the permitted amount when it was not. I am quite satisfied that of those who worked on Mr. Mackinlay’s campaign, she was the author and origin of this falsehood. In short, she created false documents designed to show that Mr. Mackinlay had been elected according to law, when he had not. Neither he nor Mr. Gray, the agent, knew what she had done and both trusted her to prepare honest returns and intended to provide truthful and complete returns of the expenses.
I am satisfied that Mrs Little deliberately set about concealing the true nature of the Mackinlay campaign very soon after she arrived in South Thanet. She became the agent in all but name, but could not take over formally because that would have meant that a proportion of her salary had to be declared as an expense and she is paid more than twice what Mr. Gray was paid. Her own expenses on their own would have meant that the campaign exceeded its permitted cost. She never had any intention of declaring her own costs.