LABOUR’S “Ed stone” has helped cost the party a record £20,000 fine after officials failed to declare it in election expenses.
The carved stone tablet was the subject of two out of 74 undeclared expenses during the 2015 General Election campaign.
Now the party has settled a £20,000 fine issued by the Electoral Commission – the highest penalty the watchdog has ever handed down.
Bob Posner, director of party and election finance at the independent regulator, 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.”
Carved with six key election pledges, the “Ed stone” was unveiled by then-Labour leader Ed Miliband in a Hastings car park five days before polling day.
Standing more than eight feet high, the two-tonne limestone slab was intended to show voters that Labour would not abandon its promises if voted into office, with Miliband pledging to erect it in the Downing Street rose garden if he became prime minister.
In the end, the party secured only 30 per cent of the vote, losing 26 seats. Speculation rose about the whereabouts of the stone and earlier this year it emerged it had been destroyed weeks after the results were announced.
The expenses inquiry began after reporters studying Labour’s campaign spending return discovered there was no mention of the stone and called the Electoral Commission.
Labour said one payment of £5,400 and another of £2,210 relating to the tablet had not been submitted due to a “procedural error”.
After the investigation began, an internal party review uncovered another 24 undeclared expenses worth £109,780.
Almost 50 further missing payments were then identified by the commission. This amounted to almost £11,360 and included transport of party activists during the campaign.
However, a probe into Harriet Harman’s pink bus, aimed at attracting female votes, found no irregularities.
Meanwhile, more than 30 invoices worth a combined £34,390 were found to be missing from the return and the commission said Labour general secretary Iain McNicol, who is also the party’s treasurer, had committed two election offences.
McNicol explained some of the omissions may be due to “accidental deletions” while the party was compiling and removing “irrelevant” items from its campaign return, while others could have been caused by a “lack of understanding” about the rules.
In a statement, the Electoral Commission said the party had co-operated, but noted that “this is not the first occasion where the party has failed to deliver a complete campaign spending return” and called on the government to grant it the power to impose larger fines “in proportion with the spending and donations handled by large campaigners”.
A Labour spokesperson said: “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 one per cent 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.”
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