Exclusive: Yes to AV leaflets printed on ballot machines

Chris Huhne’s decision to threaten the Prime Minister with legal action — as I mentioned earlier — is particularly curious because he must be well-aware of the conflicts of interest at work in the Yes campaign. After all, his partner, Carina Trimingham is a director of Yes! and the Electoral Reform Society. She has been involved in this referendum from the start. And Mr Huhne must, therefore, know why Conservatives, and plenty of others, feel nervous about the relationships between the Electoral Reform Society who are running the Yes campaign and their business arm, Electoral Reform Services, who are financing the Yes campaign.

I have just discovered, for example, that not only has Electoral Reform Services donated more than £1m to fund the Yes cause, not only do they have a financial interest in the outcome of the referendum, but they are profiting both from the administration of that referendum and even the campaign as well.

Documents seen by The Spectator clearly show that Electoral Reform Services will administer postal votes for the elections next month. Given their role last year, I suspect ERSL will print upwards of 1.9 million, but they won’t tell me precisely how many.

And, remarkably, ERSL have also been employed by the Yes campaign to print their campaign literature. Below is an example of one of their leaflets which clearly states that it was printed by “Electoral Reform Services, The Election Centre, 33 Clarendon Road, London N8 0NW.”

Since the Electoral Reform Services only has one printing room in The Election Centre (it doesn't normally do leaflet printing), this means that the Yes leaflets will be coming out of the same printing press as the official ballots used in the election.

Precisely what the contract is worth I don’t know — they won’t tell me — though I note that the Yes campaign’s provisional budget stated that it would spend £2.2 millio on printing.

So, after all this scraping away, a rather grim picture is beginning to emerge of a vast referendum money-go-round with ERSL at the centre. This is a picture Carina Trimingham must know in even finer detail. She will also have seen notes from Mike Burdett, the ERSL Chairman, who wrote to the Yes campaigners last year to ask them to "keep their services in mind".

Chris Huhne’s objective seems to be quite the reverse, however. He doesn't want anyone to “consider” the role of Electoral Reform Services in this referendum because those who do end up asking the same question: is it appropriate for a profit-making business to finance a campaign without registering the donation, print that campaign’s leaflets, pay for its staffing and also administer the very election it seeks to influence? I’m sure Carina Trimingham knows the answer to that question too.