Vote Leave was designated the official lead campaigner for leaving the European Union on 13 April 2016. The 2016 referendum campaign then ran from 15 April to 23 June, ending with 17,410,742 Leave votes and 16,141,241 Remain votes nationally, according to the Electoral Commission results page.
Contents
- Vote Leave’s designation and campaign framework
- Campaign finance and registered campaigners
- Vote Leave compared with the Remain campaign
- Staffing, complaints and campaign administration
- Spending investigation and reported inaccuracies
- Aggregate IQ payments and penalties
- Referendum results and regional figures
Vote Leave’s designation and campaign framework
The Electoral Commission received three applications for the official Leave designation. Vote Leave was selected ahead of The Go Movement Ltd and the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition. The designation announcement dated 13 April 2016 therefore established Vote Leave as one of the referendum’s two lead campaigners.
The regulated campaign period lasted from 15 April 2016 through 23 June 2016. Each designated lead campaigner received a spending limit of £7 million. The available public grant for each designated lead campaigner was up to £600,000. The Electoral Commission’s regulation report says the Commission made an initial grant payment of £200,000 before further instalments, and that Vote Leave accepted the grant. The final audited amounts paid were made available on the Commission website.
These figures describe the formal framework for the campaign. They do not by themselves measure every political message or the influence of individual advertisements; they identify the limits and public support attached to the two designated organisations.
Campaign finance and registered campaigners
The Electoral Commission’s regulation report recorded 123 campaigners registered from 1 February 2016. Of these, 63 supported Remain and 60 supported Leave. Across the registered campaigners, reported spending totalled £32,642,158. Reported donations totalled £30,714,106, while reported loans totalled £6,071,940.
The split between the two sides was close for donations but very different for loans:
| Measure | Leave campaigners | Remain campaigners |
|---|---|---|
| Reported donations | £15,854,432 | £14,859,674 |
| Reported loans | £6,028,000 | £43,940 |
The donations figures are reported totals for Leave and Remain campaigners in the Commission’s regulation report. The loans figures show that nearly all reported campaign loans in this dataset were attributed to Leave campaigners.
The same report recorded Vote Leave Ltd’s accepted donations at £9,858,149. Its reported spending was £6,742,466. That was against a £7,000,000 spending limit, and the report described Vote Leave as having spent 96% of its limit. The percentage is the Commission’s reported figure; it is retained here without adding a new calculation.
Vote Leave compared with the Remain campaign
The In Campaign Ltd was the designated Remain lead campaigner. Its reported spending was £6,767,584 against a £7,000,000 limit, or 97% of that limit in the Electoral Commission’s regulation report.
| Lead campaigner | Reported spending | Spending limit | Reported share of limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vote Leave Ltd | £6,742,466 | £7,000,000 | 96% |
| The In Campaign Ltd | £6,767,584 | £7,000,000 | 97% |
On the reported figures, the two lead organisations spent similar amounts within the same formal limit. Vote Leave’s accepted donations, at £9,858,149, refer specifically to Vote Leave Ltd and should not be confused with the £15,854,432 total reported for all Leave campaigners.
The Commission also reported combined figures for 58 other registered campaigners: £40,600,000 of spending, £10,101,809 of spending incurred, and £8,736,907 of donations accepted. The wording of the regulation report distinguishes these combined figures from the separate lead-campaigner totals.
Staffing, complaints and campaign administration
By the end of 2015, Vote Leave Ltd already employed 30 permanent staff, according to the Electoral Commission’s regulation report. Media commentary cited in that report said Vote Leave employed 46 professional staff working on its ground campaign. These are different descriptions and counts, so they should not be merged into a single staffing total.
For comparison, The In Campaign Ltd had 20 staff by the end of 2015, while Leave.EU employed 84 staff by the same point. Both comparison figures are reported in the Commission’s regulation report. The dates matter: these staffing numbers describe the end of 2015, before the regulated campaign period began on 15 April 2016.
The Commission received 454 complaints about campaign material from the two lead campaigners. Of those complaints, 413 related to Vote Leave Ltd material and 41 related to The In Campaign Ltd material. The regulation report therefore attributed the larger number of complaints to Vote Leave material, while recording complaints against both lead campaigns.
Spending investigation and reported inaccuracies
The Electoral Commission’s investigation report later found that Vote Leave’s referendum spending was £7,449,079 after common-plan spending was added. Vote Leave’s statutory spending limit was £7,000,000. The common-plan spending attributed to Vote Leave was £676,015.87.
The investigation report said Mr Halsall failed to declare that £676,015.87 of common-plan spending. It also found that the spending return was inaccurate in respect of 43 items totalling £236,501.44. Required invoices and receipts were missing for eight payments, whose total value was £12,849.99.
The report identified several separate classification and recording issues. The return included £234,275.40 that was not referendum spending. Four payments worth £1,828 were included even though they related to an event after 23 June 2016. Another 10 payments were incorrectly aggregated as one item, contributing to the 43-item inaccuracy.
Two entries in the original return concerned unused material. One entry of £91,275.43 was described as unused material on hand at 14 April. Another entry of -£142,999.97 was described as unused material on hand at 24 June. The investigation report said these entries were actually proportions of 34 individual payments for items not fully used during the campaign.
The reported £7,449,079 figure includes the common-plan attribution identified by the investigation. It is therefore distinct from Vote Leave Ltd’s earlier reported spending of £6,742,466 in the Commission’s regulation report. The two figures come from different stages of the regulatory record and should not be treated as interchangeable.
Aggregate IQ payments and penalties
The Courts and Tribunals Judiciary’s Court of Appeal summary says the Commission’s fines were £41,000 for the first three offences and £20,000 for the fourth offence. The summary says the investigation concerned payments to Aggregate IQ, a Canadian data analytics firm, for campaign services during the referendum.
The Good Law Project judgment from the Judiciary says the AIQ payments in issue totalled £620,000. The payments were £400,000 on or about 16 June 2016, £40,000 on 20 June 2016, and £180,000 on 21 June 2016. Those dates place all three listed payments within the regulated campaign period, which ended on 23 June 2016.
The Electoral Commission’s investigation report records four fines imposed on Vote Leave: £20,000 for failing to deliver a complete spending return, £1,000 for missing invoices and receipts, £20,000 for exceeding its spending limit after the common-plan attribution, and £20,000 for failing to comply with the investigation notice. It also records a £20,000 fine for Mr Darren Grimes over his BeLeave spending offence. Mr Grimes’s spending on behalf of BeLeave exceeded the statutory limit by £666,015.87.
The report further records a £250 fine for Mr David Banks for the Veterans for Britain donation-reporting offence. These fines concern different people and offences and should not be combined as if they were all Vote Leave Ltd penalties.
The Commission contacted Vote Leave on 20 November 2017 to open the investigation. Its first investigation notice to Vote Leave was served on 21 February 2018, and Vote Leave did not respond until after the deadline had passed. Vote Leave’s lawyers sent a Pre-Action Protocol Letter in January 2018 saying they intended to seek judicial review. The Commission issued its final determinations to Vote Leave on 17 July 2018.
Referendum results and regional figures
The Electoral Commission results page recorded a total electorate of 46,500,001, turnout of 72.2%, and 25,359 rejected ballots. The national result was 17,410,742 Leave votes compared with 16,141,241 Remain votes.
The regional figures below show the vote totals, turnout and electorate recorded for six areas:
| Area | Leave votes | Remain votes | Turnout | Electorate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| East | 1,880,367 | 1,448,616 | 75.7% | 4,398,796 |
| East Midlands | 1,475,479 | 1,033,036 | 74.2% | 3,384,299 |
| London | 1,513,232 | 2,263,519 | 69.7% | 5,424,768 |
| North East | 778,103 | 562,595 | 69.3% | 1,934,341 |
| North West | 1,966,925 | 1,699,020 | 70.0% | 5,241,568 |
| Northern Ireland | 349,442 | 440,707 | 62.7% | not stated here |
Leave led Remain in the East, East Midlands, North East and North West figures listed above. London and Northern Ireland recorded more Remain votes than Leave votes. The turnout figures ranged from 62.7% in Northern Ireland to 75.7% in the East among these listed areas.
The national electorate and turnout are separate from the regional electorate figures. All results and measurement figures in this section refer to the 2016 referendum as recorded on the Electoral Commission results page.