‘EdStone’ delivers another humiliation for Labour after they are slapped with a £20,000 fine for failing to hand over receipts for Miliband’s disastrous policy plinth
The Electoral Commission found the party failed to correctly declare £123,748 of campaign spending
LABOUR has suffered another humiliation from the 2015 General Election defeat after it was fined £20,000 for failing to declare spending on the ‘EdStone’.
It was the largest ever imposed by the Electoral Commission after it found the party was missing the right receipts for £123,748 of campaign spending.
The eight-foot stone plinth was known as Ed Miliband’s electoral tombstone when it was unveiled to widespread mockery last year.
The tablet, inscribed with meaningless pledges by the Labour leader, was supposed to be placed in the Downing Street rose garden if he had won the election.
But after a calamitous defeat to David Cameron’s Tories it was hidden in a warehouse and allegedly smashed to bits, after journalists tried to track it down.
It now emerges that Labour failed to declare £7,614 worth of receipts for the stone plinth, heaping yet further misery on the party.
A report compiled by the Electoral Commission found in total Labour failed to correctly declare 74 payments worth £123,748 of campaign spending “without a reasonable excuse”.
They were also missing 33 separate invoices totalling £34,392.
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They announced this morning the registered treasurer of the party committed two offences in delivering this incomplete return, and they were fined £20,000.
A spokesman for the commission confirmed this was the largest fine it has imposed since it began operations in 2001.
Commenting on the outcome of the investigation, Bob Posner, Director of Party and Election Finance at the Electoral Commission said:
“The Labour Party is a well-established, experienced party. Rules on reporting campaign spending have been in place for over 15 years and it is vital that the larger parties comply with these rules and report their finances accurately if voters are to have confidence in the system.”
The investigation began after the commission released spending returns for the 2015 General Election in January of this year.
After reporters tried to find out how much the disastrous monolith had cost the party, they searched for receipts relating to the EdStone.
But after none could be found, they contacted the Electoral Commission, who decided to look into the matter themselves.
After an extensive probe into Labour’s invoices they found it had broken strict rules in a number of areas, including how money sent bussing activists into seats was declared.
It said: “The Commission found that the two missing payments relating to the stone tablet, and 23 of the 24 missing payments identified by the Party’s internal review, were missing from the Party’s campaign spending return as a result of internal financial process failures.
“These payments totalled £112,391.”
It said Iain McNicol, the party’s treasurer “did not have a reasonable excuse for these missing payments”.
A Labour Party spokeswoman said: "Labour has co-operated fully with the Electoral Commission during its investigation into general election 2015 campaign spending by political parties.
"The commission's investigation found that internal procedural errors led to a relatively small number of items of expenditure not being declared properly.
"The party regrets these administrative errors.
"However, these amounted to just over 1% of our total spending of over £12 million during this election.
"We accept the findings of the report and have already tightened our internal recording procedures to address the commission's concerns."