Phil Woolas: MP loses appeal

Former minister Phil Woolas has lost his High Court to reverse the decision to strip him of his Commons seat after being found guilty of making false statements that ‘stirred up racial and religious divisions’ in his bid to win the Oldham East and Saddleworth seat in the May general election.

A specially convened election court declared void the General Election result in Oldham East and Saddleworth. It removed Mr Woolas as the MP and banned him from standing for election for three years after finding him guilty of deliberately lying about a rival, Liberal Democrat Elwyn Watkins.

At a recent hearing in London, Mr Woolas's legal team asked three senior judges to rule that the election court misdirected itself in law and made a flawed decision. At the High Court Lord Justice Thomas, Mr Justice Tugendhat and Mrs Justice Nicola Davies gave their judgment today in which they rejected his bid.

In a summary of their decision, the judges rejected Mr Woolas’s argument that he had only made legitimate criticisms of his rival’s political position. They said that two claims in election pamphlets had “gone beyond” solely about the Lib Dem candidate’s political position.

The legal challenge was brought on for hearing as a matter of urgency to ensure the seat does not go too long without an MP.

Labour - which immediately suspended former immigration minister Mr Woolas from the party - said it would delay calling a fresh election pending the legal fight.

Mr Woolas has been accused by lawyers for political opponent Mr Watkins of employing a strategy to get elected "of the basest kind".

He was found guilty of illegal practices under election law over comments made in his campaign material that Mr Watkins tried to "woo" the votes of Muslims who advocated violence and that he had refused to condemn extremists who advocated violence against the Labour ex-minister.

The election court judges ruled that, although made in the context of an election campaign, the comments clearly amounted to attacks on his opponent's "personal character or conduct" and Mr Woolas, who beat Mr Watkins by just 103 votes in a bitter campaign, had "no reasonable grounds for believing them to be true and did not believe them to be true".