Six days have passed since I reported that the home address information of a Green Party candidate in Newham published by Newham Council on its website was both inaccurate and of a type that appears not to be in line with election law.
The official Statement of Persons Nominated for Royal Victoria ward (pictured below) says in its “home address” column that Green candidate Rob Callender lives at an “address in Royal Victoria”. However, according to Newham’s electoral register, Callender does not live in the electoral ward of that name, as his home address is in the Royal Albert ward next door.
Furthermore, the rules governing what information may be published as a candidate’s home address for local elections in London state that there are only two options available: the candidate’s full home address or, if that candidate wishes to keep that private and lives in Greater London, the name of the London borough (or other local authority area) in which he or she resides must be submitted on the nomination papers. This is known as the “relevant area”.
Callender’s home address information, which is repeated on ballot papers for tomorrow’s vote in Royal Victoria ward, does not conform to either description. Newham councillor Steve Brayshaw, who is defending his Royal Victoria ward seat for Labour, ask the police to intervene.
His displeasure stems from his widely-shared view that some voters favour candidates who stress that they live in the ward they are contesting. His argument is that Callender having the words “address in Royal Victoria” next to his name gives him an unfair advantage in what has been a closely contested ward, because he, Brayshaw – who, unlike Callender, does live in Royal Victoria ward – has “address in Newham” next to his.
What has happened since? To Brayshaw’s frustration, not much. The police have declined to act. The council has repeated its view that it wasn’t allowed to challenge what was written. And the Greens have provided me with a statement, which said: “We are aware of the inconsistency and have been in contact with the council. At this stage, it’s unclear where the error occurred, as documents pass through many hands.” It added: “As an experienced candidate, Rob is familiar with correctly completing nomination papers and there is no evidence that he submitted anything false.”
All of this raises a few questions. How did what the Greens call an “error” occur? Is Newham Council correct to say to Brayshaw, as it has to me, that it must accept nomination papers “on face value”, even if they plainly don’t abide by the home address rules? And why have I yet to find any examples from other boroughs of home address rules being broken while in Newham’s case I’ve found 16?
My reading of the Greens’ statement is that Callender himself is not responsible for the “error” and that it could have made by a variety of other people, though the Greens don’t specify who. Are they implying that someone at the council has been at fault? If so, the council seems unlikely to accept this, given its insistence, which is consist with what the Electoral Commission told me, that nomination papers must be accepted as submitted.
Who else might have put “address in Royal Victoria” in the home address box of Callender’s nomination papers? In his first letter to the police, Brayshaw informed them that his election agent had – as they are entitled to in the presence of a relevant council officer – “reviewed Mr Callender’s nomination paperwork” and that this review had shown that the name of Newham had originally and correctly appeared in the home address section of Callender’s nomination paperwork, but later been, in Brayshaw’s words, “crossed out and replaced with ‘Royal Victoria’.”
I am told that it is usual practice for nomination papers to be filled in online, with the full home address or allowed “relevant area” typed in. The form is then printed out and delivered to the Returning Officer by hand. So if “address in Newham” was indeed crossed out and replaced with “address in Royal Victoria”, as I am assured it was, who did it? Somebody knows. Probably, more than one person knows. But none of them are saying.
The “face value” question is interesting. Although the Electoral Commission has told me, in line with Newham, that Returning Officers “must accept nominations at face value”, its guidance for candidates completing nomination papers, which appears on its website, says as follows:
“The RO [Returning Officer] can hold your nomination paper invalid if the particulars of your nomination are not as required by law. The RO can also reject your nomination if they conclude it is clearly a sham, for example an obviously fictitious name is provided.”
Callender’s nomination was clearly not a sham, but its particulars, it seems to me, were not “as required by law”. Leaving aside the fact that Callender doesn’t actually live in Royal Victoria ward, wouldn’t “address in Royal Victoria” immediately be spotted as being not the “relevant area” to submit as a home address, and of itself be sufficient grounds for the Returning Officer to hold the nomination paper invalid? According to Newham Council, it would not.
As for my third question, I haven’t had time to look through the Statement of Persons Nominated lists of all 31 other boroughs – there are elections on, you know – but I picked a varied group of six – Bromley, Enfield, Hackney, Hillingdon, Sutton and Westminster – and scrolled through every candidate’s details.
I didn’t find a single one whose home address box didn’t contain either a full home address – for example, 6 Cherry Orchard Close or 12 Oaklands Way, plus postcodes – or an approved “relevant area”, almost always stated as an address in the London borough in question, or else that of a different London borough or a local authority outside the capital (for example, Broxbourne and Surrey), as appropriate.
Perhaps if I kept looking I would find boroughs other than Newham where numerous invalid home address details have appeared on Statements of Persons Nominated as candidates. Perhaps this isn’t a mystery at all and the “face value” approach has been followed everywhere, with Newham just happening to have a bunch of candidates who filled in the form wrongly while other boroughs didn’t. Perhaps I’m missing something really obvious here, but if I am no one has mentioned it so far.
I can see perfectly well that “error” might be the right word for describing what has happened with Rob Callender, his Royal Victoria ward Green Party running mate – whose statement also says “address in Royal Victoria”, though at least she actually lives there – and 14 others in Newham, most of them not members of major political parties and therefore perhaps inexperienced in these matters. But, if so, whose “error” was it? Was more than one error involved? I think we should be told.
The Electoral Commission has confirmed to me that candidate nominations once accepted by a Returning Officer cannot be challenged during an election, but can be afterwards by means of an election petition. Right now, though, that is of little consolation to Steve Brayshaw.
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