Legal bid driven by concerns that process had been halted by ‘political sensitivities’

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A group including three MPs has begun a legal bid to challenge police over delays to the investigation into alleged offences by leave campaigners in the Brexit referendum.

The application for judicial review says that it is nearly a year since the Metropolitan police were given evidence connected to the Vote Leave and Leave.EU campaigns and the delays were “exceptional, unjustified and in breach of the proposed defendants’ respective duties”.

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The bid – filed against the Met commissioner, Cressida Dick – is in the name of MPs Ben Bradshaw, Caroline Lucas and Tom Brake, from Labour, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats respectively, as well as Green peer Jenny Jones and former Labour MP Fiona Mactaggart.

It is being submitted by the legal firm Bindmans. The group launching the action are seeking crowdfunded donations to cover the estimated £12,000 cost.

The Met says it received more than 2,400 documents from the Electoral Commission, the official elections watchdog, and are still awaiting more, which has caused a delay.

Vote Leave, the official pro-Brexit campaign in the 2016 referendum, was fined £61,000 in July last year by the Electoral Commission.

The commission found that a youth-focused adjunct group, BeLeave, spent more than £675,000 on digital campaign work coordinated with Vote Leave, which was not properly declared.

Darren Grimes, the BeLeave founder, and Vote Leave official David Halsall were reported to police. Grimes was also separately fined £20,000. In March, Vote Leave dropped an appeal against the fine.

In May, Leave.EU, the unofficial pro-Brexit campaign co-founded by former Ukip donor Arron Banks, was fined £70,000 for exceeding its statutory spending limit by at least 10% and delivering incomplete and inaccurate spending and transaction returns. The group’s chief executive, Liz Bilney, was referred to the police for investigation.

The National Crime Agency is also looking into allegations of multiple criminal offences by Banks and Bilney, it announced in November.

In October the Conservative MP Damian Collins asked the Met why it had not opened a formal investigation into the allegations, following reports the force had delayed the process due to “political sensitivities”.

Bradshaw said the legal bid was needed “because of the growing public frustration at how this whole process has been dragging on”. He said: “The referendum happened three years ago, lawbreaking has been established now for a considerable amount of time.

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“There is growing concern that our law-enforcement agencies are not acting as the impartial, independent organisation that they are statutorily obliged to be, but are for some reason nervous, or hesitant about concluding these investigations because they consider the issue to be politically sensitive. That is not acceptable in a democracy.”

Jones – who the Met put on a database of suspected “domestic extremists” while she was a London Assembly member who, as part of her role, scrutinised the force – said the case centred on “honesty, transparency and democracy”.

She said: “First, democracy doesn’t work if people can buy power. Also, the police appear to be making a political decision about what they investigate and who should be prosecuted, and that seems very difficult.”

A statement from the Met said that following the referrals in May and July, the Electoral Commission passed more than 2,400 documents, “which are being assessed by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) in order to make an informed decision as to whether a criminal investigation is undertaken”.

It added: “As part of that assessment the MPS identified that additional material was held by the Electoral Commission which may be potentially relevant. This material has also been requested. Until all the relevant material is received in full we will be unable to complete the assessment.”