Conservative Party ‘Reminded of the Need to Comply with the Law’ After Sending Fake Sadiq Khan ‘Driving Charge’ Notices

The Conservative party has been rebuked by the official privacy watchdog and “reminded of the need to comply with the law” after they sent out thousands of fake “driving charge notices” to Londoners, which were designed to mislead them into handing over their personal data to the party.

The Information Commissioner’s Office wrote to the Conservatives after their candidate for London mayor, Susan Hall, sent out leaflets, prior to the election in May, which were designed to look like driving penalty notices.

The leaflets contained the text “DRIVING CHARGE NOTICE. DO NOT IGNORE. WARNING. THE MAYOR OF LONDON IS PLANNING ANOTHER TAX ON DRIVERS. IF YOUR’RE NOT PREPARED TO PAY THEN SCAN THE QR CODE BELOW”.

Anyone scanning the code was taken to a website requesting that they fill out a “petition” against the new “tax”, which then harvested their data.

Under the law political parties are required to clearly label campaign material to alert voters to their source.

However, Hall’s leaflets contained no reference to Susan Hall on the front of the leaflet, and only contained a single small print reference to Hall at the bottom of the reverse side.

The Conservative Party was not mentioned at all, aside from a small print reference to ‘CCHQ’ which is an abbreviation for Conservative Campaign Headquarters.

The linked website did also contain a small print reference to the Conservative Party. However, many Londoners receiving the leaflets were unlikely to realise the source of the supposed ‘Driving Charge Notice’ they had received.

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A spokesperson for the Information Commissioner’s Office told Byline Times that: “After considering the concerns raised, we contacted the Conservative Party in relation to the leaflets. Following this contact, we were satisfied that no further regulatory intervention was required.”

They added that: “We had regular and ongoing engagement with political parties across the pre-election period. Where issues arose, we contacted the parties to find out more information and to remind them of the need to comply with the law.

“The contact with the Conservative Party on these leaflets was in that vein.”

Following the ICO’s intervention, a new version of the leaflet was sent out by the Conservative party, with altered text and without the QR code designed to harvest voter data.

However, the leaflets still contained the same false claim that Khan was committed to imposing pay-per-mile charging across London.

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Proposals for pay-per-mile road charging had been discussed in the past by City Hall, including by Khan’s Conservative predecessor Boris Johnson. Rishi Sunak was also reportedly a previous supporter of such plans.

However, Khan repeatedly ruled out bringing in pay-per-mile charging, saying again earlier this year that he had “categorically” ruled out any such plans.

A spokesperson for Khan told this paper that Hall had been pushing a “barefaced lie” as part of a “desperate” bid to win votes.

The Conservative party later extended this false claim during the general election to wrongly claim that the Labour party planned to impose a national road-charging scheme across the country should it form the next government.

Hundreds of video adverts were posted on Facebook, which were individualised to target constituencies around the country, claimed that “Labour’s national ULEZ” is “coming to a road near you this July”.

In the videos, newspaper clippings about Khan’s ultra low emission zone were placed alongside messages asking “Do you want this in [the name of individual constituency]?

In reality Labour had repeatedly ruled out imposing national road charging, while Keir Starmer attracted criticism within his own party for urging Khan to reconsider his scheme in London.

The ‘Driving Charge Notice’ leaflets previously led to calls from Khan’s campaign for a criminal investigation.

However, under current electoral law, it is not an offence for political parties to make entirely false statements about the policies of their opponents, effectively giving parties the green light to publish disinformation during election periods.

The Conservative party were contacted for comment but had not responded by the time of publication.