Can you make this election arithmetic add up?

Yesterday’s blog post headlined Frank Field’s election campaign spent £254.40 on balloon gas but what else was money spent on? contained a donations page (which is below).

As you can see above, Wirral Council has removed the names and addresses of the individual donors who donated £100 and £250 to Frank Field’s election campaign.

However the legislation, s.89(1A) of the Representation of the People Act 1983 only allows them to remove addresses of individual donors to candidate’s election campaigns, not the names of individual donors too!

I have e-mailed Wirral Council requesting the names of the donors who donated £100 and £250, which shouldn’t have been blacked out when I inspected the return.

There’s also something declared in the election expenses for Frank Field’s campaign that from a technical legal perspective shouldn’t have been included as election expenses. To stand as a General Election candidate you require a £500 deposit which is refunded if you get 5% of the vote.

Obviously Frank Field got more than 5% and the deposit would have been refunded. However section 95ZA subsection 2 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 states

Part 2 (General Exclusions) of Schedule 4A of the Representation of the People Act 1983 states:

Rules 9 of Schedule 1 relates to the £500 deposit for parliamentary elections and is below for reference.

However moving on from trivial matters, to the more serious issue of how you split expenses incurred jointly between two campaigns.

Below are the declarations of Phil Davies and his election agent Jean Stapleton about Phil Davies’ election expenses return in Birkenhead and Tranmere stating that to the “best of my knowledge and belief it is a complete and accurate return as required by law”.

There are maximum expenditure limits for local election candidates, which are set at £740 + 6 pence per an elector. As there were 9,525 electors in Birkenhead and Tranmere this means the maximum expenditure limit comes to £740 + (£0.06 times 9,525) = £1,311.50 . You can see this amount used for Phil Davies’ election expenses return below.

Spending over these limits is classed as an illegal practice, see section 76 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 and if the candidate and/or agent “knew or ought reasonably to have known that the expenses would be incurred in excess of that maximum amount” then a court can find them guilty of an illegal practice and they could be barred from standing in the by-election that would result.

The total spent by Phil Davies’ campaign as declared on the election expenses return was £1,266.17 as you can see from this page below.

Electoral Commission guidance (see the bottom of page 81 here states on the issue of splitting expenses:

As part of the campaigns of Frank Field and Phil Davies a joint leaflet was put out and the total costs of £1,511 were split between the two campaigns.

As you can see below £377.75 of the joint leaflet was attributed to Frank Field’s campaign.

The invoice submitted as part of Phil Davies’ election expenses return show that the remaining (£1500 – £377.75) = £1133.55 was split five ways equally between the campaigns for Bidston & James, Birkenhead & Tranmere, Claughton, Prenton and Rock Ferry.

The portion of this leaflet attributed to Phil Davies’ campaign was £226.65.

However different amounts of leaflets were printed for each area (as you can see on the invoice). 7,263 for Bidston & St. James, 8,055 for Birkenhead and Tranmere, 6,787 for Claughton, 6,974 for Rock Ferry and 6,090 for Prenton.

This total comes to 35,169 leaflets. The proportion for Birkenhead and Tranmere was 8,055. 8,055 divided by 35,169 = 22.9%. 22.9% of £1133.55 = £259.58 (£32.93 higher than the number used when it is instead just split five ways instead).

This wasn’t the only joint leaflet between Frank Field’s and Phil Davies’ campaign though. There was also the “Vote Twice” leaflet. As you can see below, £243 of this was attributed to Frank Field’s campaign.

Here’s the invoice for the vote twice leaflet submitted with Phil Davies’ election expenses return.

This is where I can’t even understand how the split used has been arrived at.

£972 – the proportion paid for by Frank Field’s campaign (£243) = £729

The invoice states:

VOTE TWICE leaflets
QTY 3000 CLAUGHTON/PRENTON
QTY 4000 BIDSTON/ROCK FERRY/BIRKENHEAD

Handwritten on the invoice is “BIRKENHEAD & TRANMERE SHARE = £139.80 ONLY DELIVERED 3600 leaflets = £71.90”

If £729 was split five ways it would come out as £145.80 per a ward.
If £729 is split by numbers of leaflets delivered in Birkenhead and Tranmere it would be £729 * (3600/7000) = £374.91.

If the amount for the proportion of leaflets for Bidston/Rock Ferry/Birkenhead (4000) is calculated as 4000/7000 * £729 = £416.57. Then as it’s for three wards it’s divided by three, £416.57/3 = £138.86 (which is near enough to one of the figures used of £139.80).

However this figure (£139.80 would be for 1333 leaflets (4000 divided by 3)). For some bizarre reason 3600/7000 has been used to arrive at a proportion of £138.86 as £71.90. Doing it this way appears to be incorrect (to me anyway as logically if 3600 leaflets were delivered instead of 1333 it should lead to an increased not decreased amount).

If 3600 leaflets were delivered in Birkenhead and Tranmere then the figure should have been (£972 – Frank Field’s share (£243)) * (3600/7000) = £374.91 (£303.10 higher then declared).

The net effect of using of both these calculations under the “honest assessment principle” of sharing costs between these joint leaflets is to increase the expenditure on this campaign by £32.93 + £303.10 = £336.03.

This would make the total expenditure £336.03 + £1,266.17 = £1602.20 (massively above the maximum expenditure limit of £1,311.50).

So who’s got their figures wrong, myself or Phil Davies and his agent?

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