Electoral System in UK Law

If a person is found guilty of a corrupt practice under section 115 he is liable to be prosecuted on indictment. Furthermore he may be the subject of severe electoral disqualifications under section 160(4). Mr. Tolson submits that the civil standard of proof should obtain before an electoral court otherwise elections which should be set aside may stand on the grounds that a corrupt practice had not been proved to the necessary degree of certainty.

Mr Gough was directly involved in the decision to make the application under rule 47. Mr Field told him that he agreed to the application being made if it could properly be done. The question which Mr Gough had to decide was whether, in the circumstances which had arisen, it was permissible to apply under rule 47. It was incumbent upon Mr Gough, who had been asked to advise about the feasibility of using rule 47, to address all these questions.

Flexibility and discretion are all very well but there is merit too in certainty, not least in the field of electoral challenge. It is undesirable to have someone serving in a public office with doubts surrounding the legitimacy of his election.

Generally speaking, public bodies should be kept to their promises. A public body should not be permitted to resile from a legitimate expectation which it has created in the minds of those members of the public to whom the undertaking which gave rise to the expectation was addressed, or who were affected by the practice which confirmed that expectation, and from which it would be an abuse of the process to resile.

That question obviously does not have to be answered in terms of statistical evidence or specific evidence of actual cases of deterrence. In practice the claimant's assertion about the potential effect of the 15 year rule on free movement is very difficult to demonstrate by any means, because it does not square with ordinary human experience.

On the contrary, I found difficulty in following how a reasonable reader in the circumstances specified in Jeynes could be expected to understand the "scandal" in question to be confined to the mere fact that Mr Waterson made a claim in respect of a mortgage and decoration. There is no attempt by the writers to distinguish what can only be factual statements (such as the amounts of the claims, and the location of the house in Kent) from matters of comment or opinion.

I think there is a real distinction between taking active steps by sending information to the members concerned, and identifying for them a place where they can go and get the information if they wish to have it. It seems to me that for good policy reasons, it is important that members are given the information which they are entitled to by section 231 actively, rather than merely being told where they can go and get it if they wish to have it.