Spending on local campaigning is capped at between £11,000 and £16,000. Exceeding this can result in anything from a fine to imprisonment, depending on the severity of the breach.



The Conservative party head office was fined £70,000 by the Electoral Commission last month for its failure to declare spending on campaigns. MPs were told by the Conservative party that its national battlebus, which brought activists to marginal seats, could be recorded as national spending. However the Electoral Commission found some of this should have been recorded as local spending.

Andrew McGill, spokesman for the CPS, said: “The position hasn’t changed for us. We’ve received files from 14 different police forces in relation to Conservative party spending for the 2015 General Election. There are charging decisions to be made.”

The CPS would not confirm whether the charging decisions might be bunched together or expedited, but Francis Hoar, one of Britain’s leading electoral barristers, told BuzzFeed News it was likely the CPS would try and announce charging decisions as quickly as possible.

“The deadlines are coming up anyway and I expect they’ll want to make their decisions as long as possible before the election,” he said. “It depends on where they are in the investigation but it’s likely that they’ve reached tentative conclusions already; they’ve had almost a year to work on this case.”

Hoar added: “This is a pretty unprecedented situation. The decision by the CPS becomes more politically sensitive if [MPs] are prosecuted whilst standing for re-election.”

If the CPS makes the decision that there is enough evidence to bring charges, MPs will come under political pressure to stand down. However, they would only be legally obliged to quit if they were convicted in court, which could not happen until long after the election.

If any MPs were convicted they would be barred for serving in elected office for between three and five years – and a by-election would be triggered. “If an MP was convicted there would be a by-election,” Hoar explained. “It’s a penalty that’s given automatically as a result of a conviction for an election offence, it’s not peculiar to that election.”