Conservative Party call centre 'may have broken law' by canvassing during election period

Investigation questions whether market research staff were actually canvassing for candidates

The Conservative Party allegedly operated a secret call centre during the general election campaign that breached electoral law, an undercover investigation by Channel 4 News has claimed.

The report said employees at Blue Telecoms in Neath, South Wales, made thousands of cold calls to voters in marginal seats in the run-up to the election.

It claimed callers were told to say they were working for a market research company called “Axe Research”. No such company is registered in England and Wales.

The programme reported the script given to employees appeared to canvass some voters on behalf of individual candidates – which would be regulated under electoral law – instead of conducting market research, which would not.

According to Channel 4, callers were later told to identify themselves as calling “on behalf of Theresa May and the Conservative Party”.

Undecided voters were fed key Conservative campaign messages, including references to the Brexit negotiations and warnings about a hung parliament.

On the day that voters went to the polls, undecided voters were told that “the election result in your marginal constituency is going to be very close between Theresa May’s Conservatives and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party”.

They were then asked: “So does knowing that you live in a marginal constituency that will determine who is prime minister for the Brexit negotiations, does that make you a lot more likely to vote for Theresa May’s Conservative candidate or a little more likely to vote for Theresa May’s Conservative candidate, or are you still unsure, or does it not make a difference?”

The broadcaster’s evidence suggests that on the day of the election, staff called voters in 10 marginal seats, including Bridgend, Gower, Clwyd South and Wrexham.

Under the Representation of the People Act, it is illegal to employ someone “for payment or promise of payment as a canvasser for the purpose of promoting or procuring a candidate’s election”.

A QC specialising in information law told the channel that political parties had to ensure that third parties working on their behalf followed the law.

“It’s an illegal practice, it’s prohibited under the legislation and in so far as it’s something which has tainted the overall result in favour of a political candidate, then it can void that result,” said Anya Proops.

A Conservative spokesman said: “Political parties of all colours pay for market research and direct marketing calls. All the scripts supplied by the party for these calls are compliant with data protection and information law.”

Blue Telecoms is run by Sascha Lopez. He told The Guardian: “In relation to the Conservative party project, I am unable to comment on the content of the scripts or calls to TPS [Telephone Preference Service] numbers, as the scripts and lists of who to call and when to call were given to us by Conservative campaign HQ in London and were not influenced by my team.”