Goldsmith, Huhne and Balls; election expenses investigation started.

I received an email today from the excellent Sunlight Centre for Open Politics, an organisation dedicated to transparency in politics.

The blog entry behind the email can be found here and the full email including a “donate” button can be found here. I’ve reproduced the email below, but I urge readers to go to the email page above and donate to this cause.

Dear Sunlight Supporter,

My name is Jim Waterson and I’m the new Research Analyst at the Sunlight Centre for Open Politics. We have this week begun a new investigation into the election spending of Zac Goldsmith, Chris Huhne and Ed Balls. We have reason to believe that there was irregular spending in all three of these tight campaigns.

There is evidence of high spending in all of these seats, yet these successful candidates managed to declare their expenditure at the permitted level. Chris Huhne and Zac Goldsmith are both multi-millionaires, while Ed Balls received large amounts of funding from the Unite trade union.

I am seeking to get to the bottom what could potentially be criminal offences, but it’s coming at a price. Not only do we have to pay local councils for the photocopying and publication of election expenses, but I will need train fares to visit the various constituencies to interview local residents. In total we we need to raise around £500 as quickly as possible. Any small contribution you could give to help this important project out would be greatly appreciated. It’s easy to donate on-line by clicking the button below, or you can give me a call on 0207 608 2756.

I will continue to update you with the progress of this investigation. Thank you in advance for making all of our work possible and your continued support of our transparency and anti-corruption campaign.

Regards,

Jim and the Sunlight Team

This ties back to the piece I did earlier about Zac Goldsmith’s appalling performance on C4 the other day. It seems that C4 has covered six MPs in relation to expenses; Zac Goldsmith, Ben Gummer, Gavin Barwell, Dan Byles, Sarah Teather and Phil Woolas. Now Ben Gummer happens to be my local MP, I know and like the bloke: he certainly seems to be as straight as the proverbial die. Intrigued I looked a bit further into it.

C4 says this about Ben Gummer:

His campaigners used T-shirts with the slogan “Vote for Ben in 2010″ but his invoices submitted by his team included no charges for these. Mr Gummer also paid his campaign manager Sophie Stanbrook £8,750 for the long campaign prior to the dissolution of parliament – but nothing after this when the spending limits are much tighter.

If Mr Gummer had paid Ms Stanbrook at the same rate after parliament was dissolved as he did before then he would have been over his spending limit by as much as £1,800.

Asked about the T-shirts the Conservative Party told Channel 4 News that items bought prior to 25 November 2009 do not count if used prior to the dissolution of Parliament.The [sic] party said that if an individual used an item after that date, that is a matter for them, thereby suggesting that such items do not need to be accounted for.

A spokesman added: “Many staff did paid work until the dissolution of Parliament and then agreed to work on a voluntary basis.”

Now, I know and like Sophie Stanbrook as well, and she too, is as straight as the proverbial. Something’s a bit odd here.

C4 has a dedicated page to each MP: Ben’s can be found here. Having read it, in all honesty, I think this is a load of puff generated to sensationalise with no real substance. Frankly, in the context of Ben Gummer’s expenses, C4 must be desperate for news here. I agree with the Conservative Party spokesman who said: “We are confident that the election expenses in question comply with the spirit and letter of election law.”

Looking further, I see that Ipswich Spy has a broadly neutral piece, which emphasises the Stanbrook angle, but the really interesting local view comes from James Spencer at Bridge Ward News, who wrote a lengthy and informative letter to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. He raises a number of points including the following about Anthony Barnett, the man helping C4 home in on Zac Goldsmith. C4 says this on Ben Gummer’s “file” page:

Fellow Tory MP Zac Goldsmith’s returns are already under review at the Electoral Commission following last week’s report by Antony Barnett.

Here’s what James Spencer has to say about Mr. Barnett (note: the relevance of the sentence “It makes the one in twenty four chance look very odd indeed.” will be made clear later):

On declaring an interest, I have watched the two broadcasts and read a lot of the articles on this and the main journalist is a Mr Anthony Barnett. It is not made clear that he was a director of the broadly anti-Conservative Charter 88, a writer for the Labour supporting New Statesman and on the editorial board of the Marxist New Left Review. It makes the one in twenty four chance look very odd indeed. I also notice that he has shared a platform with Chris Huhne in his role as the Co-Director of the Convention on Modern Liberty. Perhaps conflicts of interest of this one time soft left campaigner and new born journalist could be investigated?

Having now dug a bit about this man, I think James’ description is mild; “soft lefty”? With the best will in the world, Mr. Barnett is going to struggle to be objective, which is probably why the Sunlight Centre has stepped in. Of course, it won’t be as high-profile as C4’s splashes, but far more effective. As James raises, why aren’t C4 looking at Huhne and Balls as well? Why is only one of the MP’s C4 is looking at a Labour one, whose alleged crime is even more trivial than Ben Gummer’s? Is he a token target?

In the context of Mr. Barnett’s (and C4’s) potential bias, James has also run some numbers which make interesting reading:

There have been two investigations done on Channel 4 about expense investigations. These have covered six MPs, Zac Goldsmith, Ben Gummer, Gavin Barwell, Dan Byles, Sarah Teather and Phil Woolas. Four of these were Conservative, one Liberal Democrat and one Labour. That’s not that interesting.

What is interesting is the identity of the second party. In Croydon Central, Ipswich, Warwickshire and Brent Central the second party was Labour. In the other two it was Liberal Democrats. It seems very odd that there are no Conservatives in second place. Was Channel 4 and whatever third party outfit they were using biased on this? And how unusual was it?

I did a quick count of all the seats that had a majority of less than 4,092 (185 seats) where the Conservatives were second (75 seats). 4,092 is one more than the highest majority among these six (Zac Goldsmith with 4,091). Now the probability of any one of these seats at random having a Tory runner up would be 40.54%. So getting a non-Tory is a perfectly respectable 59.45% chance. To get two non Tory runners up and no-one else would be a lower but credible 35.22%. Three non-Tory runners up would be 20.7%, four would be 12.2% and five would be 7.15%. This would be very hard to justify as a fair representation. However six non Tory runners up would actually have a probability of 4.175%. Just under a one in twenty four chance.

What James is saying I think, and I agree with him, is that these 6 MPs have been selected not for the extent of their alleged fiddling, but to make party political points at the expense of the Coalition Government, whilst at the same time ignoring Ed “So what!” Balls (maj. 1,101) and Chris “Shagger” Huhne (maj. 3,864), who are both far more deserving targets.

Disgraceful…

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