Electoral Commission

Like others, I would like to concentrate in the short time available on something that has not yet been mentioned: the oversight of by-elections. By-elections have been in the news in England and Wales, but I would like to share an experience of a recent Scottish Parliament byelection that I think should give all Members of the House cause to consider how elections are conducted. In meetings with the Electoral Commission, I have already suggested ways in which the commission should look at the issue. There is a juggernaut heading in the direction of politics in this country which I find disturbing. It comes through the effective trebling of spending limits in by-elections to £100,000. The political campaigning time is as short as possible; most parties think it to their advantage to call short campaigns in a byelection. As we all know, with some imagination, £100,000 can go pretty far. I would like to make Members aware of some of the most dubious campaigning techniques that are being used. Again, I will concentrate on my experience in the Moray byelection, where only two months ago, there was a byelection to replace Margaret Ewing, who many people in this House will remember served here between 1974 and 1979 for East Dunbartonshire and between 1987 and 2001 for Moray. It is important to point out that I am raising the issue not out of sour grapes, because at the by-election my party secured its biggest ever majority. It was our most successful campaign ever. I am not going to go into how bad it was for other parties, but it was not good for them. The campaigning spending in that byelection was published last week. The Conservative party spent £91,000, the Lib Dems £42,000, the Scottish National party £33,000 and the Labour party £10,000. What happened in that by-election? The Conservative campaign was launched on the day of the cremation of Margaret Ewing. The majority of the materials used by the Conservative party, which has traditionally been the main challenging party in Moray, did not contain the word ““Conservative”” or ““Tory””. Clearly the impression was trying to be created that its candidate, Mary Scanlon, who had been of high standing as a Conservative Member in the Scottish Parliament for the Highlands and Islands, was ““another bonnie fechter””, creating the impression that she was following in the footsteps of a Scottish Nationalist. It is beyond credibility. Posters were put up on lampposts throughout the constituency without mention of the party’s name. The real shocker was that apparently handwritten letters were sent to constituents that claimed to be from independent councillors who never gave their permission for their names to be used in the campaign. That led to headlines on the front pages of Scottish newspapers describing the Conservatives’ campaign as ““deceitful””. The Conservatives were closely followed by the Liberal Democrats, who produced materials that claimed that the SNP candidate was from Aberdeen. That is not true. He does not live in Aberdeen. Indeed, he lived in the same parliamentary constituency as the Liberal Democrat candidate, who was described as ““local””. I have given the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander) notice that I intended to raise this issue. Clarification has been sought of why such misinformation was used repeatedly in campaign materials, despite the fact that it was established as not being true. Two months later, I still await a reply from the hon. Gentleman.