A crowdfunded private prosecution which aims to prosecute elected representatives who lied to the public during the EU Referendum campaigns.
A) Our most senior lawyer, David Perry QC, is in agreement with me that the target of our prosecution knowingly and repeatedly lied to the public about UK spending on EU membership(£350 million a week claims)
B)He is in agreement with me that intentionally lying to the public about public spending breaks public trust and is contrary to the public interest
C) We have identified 18 instances of offence in which the target of interest to our case makes knowingly false claims
D) David Perry QC is concerned that a case may not be successful because he does not believe that the 'acting as such' requirement has been met, I disagree.
E) I have instructed a new QC, who will be taking over the leadership of the case. He is carrying out a full review of our case. It is his preliminary opinion that we have an argument for a private prosecution. We are still in discussion and I urge all of us to manage our expectations as we’ve been let down before, but it’s looking good at the moment.
F) I need to raise funds to cover my living costs, including my rent which I have to pay 5 months in advance(because I don't have a stable salary). I also need money for the purchasing of evidentiary materials and for the paying of my solicitors' fees which are over £10,000 at present. A raise of £25,000 would solve our current problems in the short term.
G) This raise will enable us to get to the next stage, this is not the 'big one'. We will raise the full funds required for the case after the new QC is completely ready.
By revealing select parts of this legal opinion I am not giving permission for the rest of the content to be revealed. By redacting names and titles I am preserving its classification as a privileged document. The following is the legal opinion of David Perry QC, one of the most respected criminal barristers in the UK:
‘From the materials which we have reviewed it appears that Mr BLANK, acting in his capacity as BLANK, campaigned for a ‘leave’ vote in the EU referendum. The materials indicate that Mr BLANK adopted this position in his capacity as BLANK and not in any personal capacity’.
‘We note that Mr BLANK had adopted an official policy of advocating Vote Leave in relation to the referendum; that members of staff of the BLANK expended time in support of this official policy; that Mr BLANK was invited to speak ‘as BLANK’ at a number of Vote Leave events; that he spoke to a Parliamentary Committee about the referendum in this capacity; that he answered questions at BLANK in relation to his referendum campaigning activities; and that Mr BLANK likely incurred public expense in his activities in support of Vote Leave, as well as being accompanied by staff and (in all likelihood) police officers’
‘...These points now accord with our view that there is a good arguable case that the claims are a lie and amount to wilful misconduct…’ ‘ We are further grateful for the materials dealing with the question of whether Mr BLANK was aware that the £350 million statement was untrue. In our view these materials support a case that Mr BLANK was well aware of the falsity of the statement and knew that the statement was misleading on its face.’
‘…there is a good arguable case that the claim that the EU cost the UK £350 million every week, was a lie, and that this could amount to wilful misconduct for the purposes of the offence of misconduct in a public office…’
‘There is, further, a strong and wide -ranging public interest in ensuring that elected representatives observe the highest standards of honesty and integrity (as discussed in R v Greenway)’
‘The making of false statements of fact for the purposes of influencing voters may be considered a matter in which the public has a profound interest, concerning as it does (i) the quality and integrity of political debate, and (ii) conduct (namely deception) generally accepted to be wrong at least in a moral sense. These are matters which, it may be thought, are sufficiently serious to warrant the protection of the criminal law, and which would justify its stigma and sanction’
This project successfully funded on 26th April 2018