The law behind the Tory party election-betting scandal

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The UK Conservative party’s election campaign has been thrown into disarray by a series of allegations about bets placed on a July election shortly before Rishi Sunak made the surprise announcement last month.

So far four people have been embroiled in the scandal: Tory candidates Craig Williams and Laura Saunders; campaign director Tony Lee — who is married to Saunders; and an unnamed police office who was in Sunak’s bodyguard unit.

A large number of bets were placed shortly before Sunak’s May 22 announcement of the election, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, while the Gambling Commission, the betting industry regulator, is investigating how widespread wagers were among people with insider political knowledge.

How did the investigation start?

Bookmakers are under an obligation to alert the Gambling Commission to any suspicious betting patterns. While the body typically investigates issues such as match-fixing in sports, its remit covers any wagers that turn out to have been placed by people with inside information.

The commission’s investigation into betting on the UK election date appears to have started after bookmakers alerted it to a flurry of interest in a July election in the days before the announcement on May 22.

On June 12, Williams announced he was facing some “routine inquiries” after what he described as “a flutter” on the general election date. The Gambling Commission says it is now “investigating the possibility of offences concerning the date of the election”, but has declined to say how many people it is investigating or questioning.

The UK’s main bookmakers have said they are co-operating with the probe.

What offences might have been involved?

Betting using inside information is potentially a breach of Section 42 of the Gambling Act, which covers the offence of “cheating” and can carry a penalty of up to two years in prison, legal experts say.

The section says it is an offence if someone “cheats at gambling” or “does anything for the purpose of enabling or assisting another person to cheat at gambling”.

There has been “a lot of debate” about what “cheating” actually means, according to Christopher Bamford, a barrister specialising in gambling law.

The main legal precedent on the issue — a 2017 case involving a gambler who arranged for cards at a London casino to be shuffled in a certain way — is that is does not matter if people did not intend to cheat, but only if they appear to have cheated.

However, despite high-profile cases of gambling on sporting events over the years, there are few clear precedents for how the courts would treat the act of betting on the basis of inside information in politics.

Is everyone involved in the same position?

Sunak’s former bodyguard was arrested on Monday on suspicion of “misconduct in public office”, which criminal barrister Quentin Hunt described as a “common-law offence” — meaning its definition has evolved through past cases rather than being set out in statute.

Historical cases show the offence, which in theory carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, has been used to cover a wide variety of misconduct.

It was used against a former Bishop of Gloucester who formed sexual relationships with young priests. In another case, it was used to prosecute a police officer and community support officer in Bristol who ignored the pleas for help of a man who was subsequently tortured to death by his neighbours.

Were the police right to act in the middle of an election campaign?

To launch an investigation during an election campaign is to invite accusation of interference — such as in the US 2016 election campaign, when the FBI’s decision to reopen an investigation into Hillary Clinton happened weeks before Donald Trump’s victory.

However, Dal Babu, a former senior Metropolitan Police officer, said it was the “appropriate course of action” for the Met to arrest the protection officer, despite the potentially difficult timing.

“I worked at the House of Commons in 1997 and recall a Cabinet meeting taking place at the weekend before the election was announced,” Babu said. “But all the officers knew they kept these matters confidential.”

Rick Muir, director of the Police Foundation think-tank, agreed.

“They would always act upon it if it involved one of their officers and they were presented with information that met the threshold for a criminal investigation,” he said.