AN SNP politician has written to police, asking them to fully investigate the Conservative Party into "serious" allegations around its campaign expenditure in the 2015 General Election.
The Tories face multiple police investigations as well as a probe by the Electoral Commission over allegations they breached spending rules ahead of their knife-edge poll win last year.
They centre on whether the party should have listed the costs of bussing activists into key marginal seats under local spending accounts, rather than its national spending budget, which was larger.
Pete Wishart, MP for Perth and North Perthshire, on Sunday asked the Metropolitan police to to examine whether the party attempted to subvert the Representation of the People Act by fraudulently including this candidate expenditure as national expenditure.
Mr Wishart said: "Where many 2015 Conservative candidates are being properly investigated by a number of police forces across England over their campaign expenditure it is now time for the Conservative Party as a whole to be looked at.
"The national Conservative party must address their role in these serious allegations and be properly investigated to see if it systematically subverted the Representation of the People Act.
"There is no doubt that the activists, accommodation, busses and other transport were co-ordinated by the party nationally and this was passed of as national expenditure, even though this activity was specifically targeted to support individual candidates.
"These are very serious allegations and the penalties for those guilty of election fraud could result in large fines and even imprisonment. There are also concerns that the 2015 election was fraudulently won with a co-ordinated breach of electoral legislation.
"I have therefore asked the Metropolitan Police to properly investigate the Conservative Party and if evidence is found prepare a submission to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
"Nothing is more important than the integrity of our democracy and the British public have to be absolutely satisfied that no party won an election by breaking the rules in place to ensure that these elections are fair."
Speaking earlier in the day, David Cameron said he was confident his party can answer allegations it broke electoral laws, but said if there were "misdeclarations or things left out" from its spending accounts then the Conservative Party must put them in place.
The Prime Minister told ITV's Peston on Sunday: "In the end I'm responsible for everything. But I'm very confident that the Conservative Party is gripping this, with the chairman Andrew Feldman (Lord Feldman).
"Lots of political parties have these bus tours, buses that go round different constituencies, and that is a national expense.
"This is all now in conversation with the Electoral Commission and these other investigations so we should let that take its place.
"But I'm confident, the idea of a bus that is a national bus that visits constituencies, I think the Labour Party's done that, the Liberals have done it, we've done it..."
He added: "I don't believe we have done anything wrong. If there were misdeclarations or things left out we have to put those in place but I'm confident we can answer all the questions being put to us."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel