2 hours ago
5
Matt Goodwin, Reform UK’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton byelection, will not face a sanction for leaflets that omitted the party’s imprint, after a high court judge accepted this was due to an inadvertent printing error.
Reform admitted that it sent about 81,000 leaflets to the constituency’s voters from a “concerned neighbour”, which did not state they had been funded and distributed by the party.
Under the Representation of the People Act 1983, election material must include the name and address of those the document promotes. Failure to do can result in a £5,000 fine and a three-year disqualification from elective office.
But on Wednesday, on the eve of the byelection, Mr Justice Butcher granted Goodwin and his election agent, Adam Rawlinson, relief from these sanctions under section 167, which grants an exception if breaches are due to inadvertent error.
“I’m satisfied that the omission arose from inadvertence, or some other reasonable cause of a like nature, and did not arise for want of good faith,” the judge said.
Reform’s barrister, Adam Richardson, told the court the omission was the result of “honest administrative error” caused by Hardings Print Solutions, a London-based company which printed and distributed the leaflets.
He said proofs of the document sent to the printers included an imprint stating they were distributed on behalf of Goodwin and Reform.
When Hardings changed the font used on the leaflets to a larger size, this caused the statutory imprint to be removed, the court heard. The judge accepted this account.
Butcher said: “The omission resulted from an error in the production phase, due to a change of font. I’m satisfied that was neither requested nor desired from the claimants.”
He also said he was satisfied that Goodwin and his agent took “appropriate steps to put it right”.
The imprint was missing from a leaflet containing an open letter by Patricia Clegg, 74, who had decided to switch her support from Labour to Reform. Rawlinson told the court in London that the draft versions of the leaflet sent between Goodwin’s team and Hardings all included the imprint and were checked “in the usual way multiple times”.
He said: “For reasons known only to themselves, Hardings decided to put on a different font at the last minute. Had they [Goodwin and Rawlinson] known that was going to take place, they would have prevented it.”
Rawlinson added: “It should not have been done, it was not requested, it is unclear why it did happen, but as a result of that, the imprint was truncated off the bottom.”
Richardson confirmed the leaflet was sent to all 81,000 voters in the constituency.
Hardings had “publicly admitted full responsibility for the production error” the court heard. Lawyers on behalf of the acting returning officer attended the hearing but made no representations.
