High Court rejects the claim that Royal Mail had a duty to deliver candidate leaflets
The High Court has ruled that election candidates are not entitled to the delivery of campaign leaflets under electoral law, rejecting an argument put forward by a candidate who secured 50 votes in a recent by-election. The court found that the statutory right to send free election communications does not include a right to guarantee that Royal Mail delivers them to voters.
Graham Moore, who stood for the English Constitutional Party in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election in May, challenged the result in the Election Court. The seat was won by Sarah Pochin for Reform UK. Moore appeared in person and alleged that the election result was affected by a fraudulent or erroneous vote count. He also claimed that Royal Mail had interfered with the process by failing to deliver his party’s leaflets.
Moore submitted witness statements from 4 individuals who said they had not received an English Constitutional Party leaflet through their letterboxes. He argued that this failure undermined the fairness of the election and constituted a breach of electoral law. He originally attempted to join the Royal Mail Group as a respondent to his petition. However, the Divisional Court ruled that Royal Mail was not a proper respondent and struck out the petition against the company.
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The issue came before the Election Court, where Mr Justice Bryan and Mr Justice Martin Spencer delivered a joint judgment last week. The judges dismissed the petition in full and ordered Moore to pay costs. They concluded that his argument regarding leaflet delivery was misconceived and unsupported by the wording of Section 91(1) of the Representation of the People Act 1983.
Under Section 91(1), candidates at parliamentary elections are entitled to send one postal communication addressed to each elector free of postage. The judges emphasised that the act grants only an entitlement to send material without paying postage. It does not provide any entitlement to delivery. They noted that the statute contains no remedy for a situation in which election communications are not delivered.
The judgment stated that Parliament could not sensibly have intended to impose a guarantee of delivery, since many factors outside the control of candidates or Royal Mail can affect the distribution of leaflets. These include logistical issues, leaflets being lost during postal processing or events that prevent delivery to a particular address.
The judges said that since the legislation does not create a right to delivery, any alleged non-delivery cannot form the basis for challenging an election result. They further stated that Moore had failed to establish that any proven failure to distribute leaflets would have been significant enough to affect the outcome.
The court dismissed all grounds of challenge and confirmed the election result. Moore’s case is one of several recent petitions in which unsuccessful candidates have attempted to raise procedural issues as grounds for overturning results. The ruling reinforces that statutory entitlements relating to election communications have clear limits and that courts will not extend them beyond the wording of the law.