Tags
The published minutes of the High Speed Bill Ctte for the 12th March contain an interesting revelation from Stop Hs2’s Joe Rukin on his stunt to stand for MP in the 2010 election. It was all a cynical scam to avoid paying the Royal Mail! Here’s the extract from the minutes:
74. CHAIR: Are you a candidate on this occasion or not?
75. MR RUKIN: No. That was just a publicity stunt to get leaflets to everyone in the constituency for 800 quid.
Click to access 120315_Uncorrected_Morning.pdf
The ‘800 quid’ Rukin refers to is the deposit a candidate must pay to stand in an election (it’s actually £500 but then Rukin’s never been good with facts).
The constituency of Kenilworth & Southam contained 64,362 voters in 2010. At the time, a 2nd class stamp was 32p, so it should have cost StopHs2 £20,595 to distribute his anti-HS2 leaflets. By getting the taxpayer to subsidise the mailshot by disguising it as an electoral leaflet, stopHs2 saved a fortune
Perhaps someone with either knowledge of the postal and/or electoral system might like to answer this unanswered question. Do Royal Mail get reimbursed to deliver election letters out of taxpayers money via the Electoral Commission or similar? If so. Rukin has surely fiddled the taxpayer?
The irony is of course, it saved stopHs2 money but it didn’t save their campaign. That was holed below the waterline when a massive majority of 452 MPs voted to pass the Hs2 Hybrid Bill & it’s been slowly sinking ever since…
UPDATE:
The Cabinet Office have confirmed that the Taxpayers DOES pay for the delivery of the minimum of one leaflet for each candidate in a General Election. This means there’s little doubt that Rukin’s cynical election tactic has duped taxpayers of thousands of pounds.
Paul Bigland 
Royal Mail get reimbursed out of the General Fund (ie from the Treasury) for these. The deposit is £500 (not £800), but the rate paid is not that of a 2nd class stamp, but rather Mailsort 3, as it then was (Low Sort Economy now) for addressed literature, or door-to-door for unaddressed (which will deliver to each address in the constituency, not to each voter). Unaddressed would probably be about 35,000 – which would be £2,100 on today’s rate card (rather less in 2010). Addressed is a huge amount of work (65,000 person mailmerge, envelope stuffing, etc) and I find it very unlikely that stophs2 were able to do an addressed mailing.
Note that the purpose of the deposit is intended to deter people from abusing the free delivery. Getting £2000-worth of delivery for £500 once every five years is nice, but is hardly a gigantic abuse. Anyone capable of running an addressed mailing (which would cost more to deliver) will usually get 5% of the votes, and therefore get their deposit refunded anyway.
Thanks for your comments.What we can infer from that is – as well as the postage, StopHs2 also got the capacity that enabled them to send out such a large mailshot for free.