Butlins owner is hit with record £12,000 fine over leave campaign adverts

A bulldog wearing a union flag tie from the leave campaign ads funded by Peter Harris that appeared in the Sun and the Daily Mail.

The owner of Butlins, Peter Harris, has received a record fine from the Electoral Commission for breaking spending return rules.

The Electoral Commission imposed the £12,000 fine on Harris, who spent more than £420,000 campaigning for a leave vote in last year’s EU referendum, for failing to deliver his spending return and audit report on time.

The money was spent on full-page colour advertisements in the Daily Mail and the Sun in the week prior to the referendum vote that took place on 23 June 2016.

The ad campaign featured a bulldog wearing a tie with the union flag on it. Slogans included: “Let’s be the top dog again – vote” and: “You would be barking not to vote – this is our chance to leave the European Union.”

At the time his spokesman told the Daily Express: “It’s all very well to say you want Brexit, but you’ve got to do something about it.”

The EU referendum advertisement that appeared in the Daily Mail on 15 June 2016.

It is an offence not to deliver a spending return and audit report by the due date where a campaigner has spent more than £250,000.

The commission said that after being advised of the investigation Harris reported spending of £421,432.64 and supplied an audit report.

Separately, the Democratic Unionist party was required to pay a £4,000 fine from the Electoral Commission after errors were found in its spending return for the 2016 Northern Ireland assembly election. The party filed payments totalling £49,184 as party spend as opposed to individual candidate expenditure.

However, the commission, which oversees elections and regulates political finance in the UK, said it was satisfied that the individual politicians had reported the payments correctly and that their inclusion in the party’s return was a duplication.
The party also omitted to report two payments of £397.50 that should have been reported to the commission.

The party has informed the commission that it has reviewed its procedures to prevent a recurrence of these errors.
A DUP spokesman told the Press Association that “administrative errors” had led to the election spend being recorded as higher than it should have been. “This error was corrected in an amended campaign expenditure return,” he said.

“The party has put in place new processes to guard against this in future.”