Reform UK just admitted election spending errors and police are assessing them
19 October 2026 · 19 October 2026Share
Election banner for Reform party.Bob Harvey · CC BY-SA 2.0
Police Scotland is looking at whether nine Reform UK candidates broke the rules on election spending.
Here's what happened. Nine people stood for Reform UK in the Scottish Parliament elections, back in May. Four of them never submitted a spending return at all. That return has to show how much they spent, and the value of any donations they got.
Five more did submit a return. But they did not sign it off properly, and the law says they have to.
So who found this? Not Police Scotland. Not the Electoral Commission. It was two news outlets, The Ferret and The Sunday Times. Both got the same numbers, independently.
Now here's the twist. None of the nine were actually elected. And Reform UK still had a big night in Scotland. It came joint-second with Labour, on 17 MSPs, in its first ever Holyrood election.
So what are the rules, exactly? Simple. Every candidate has 35 days after the result to file a spending return. The candidate and their agent both have to sign it, saying it's accurate.
And here's the part that matters most. Every single candidate from every other party met that deadline. Reform UK was the only party where candidates did not.
The City of Edinburgh Council has confirmed it. Five of Reform's six constituency candidates in Edinburgh did not submit the declaration. All five had filed separately for their regional-list campaigns, just not this one.
Who are we talking about? The four who did not file at all: David McLennan, Dan Clarke, Malcolm Jones and Sean O'Hagan. The five who filed but did not sign off properly, all standing in Edinburgh: David Lees, Andrew McLaughlin, Cameron Rose, Davie Thomson and Charles Turner.
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Scottish Parliament building, Holyrood, in Edinburgh (2024). File photo. Darren J. Prior · CC BY 4.0
And David McLennan is not some unknown name in the party. He's Reform UK's first ever councillor in Scotland. He won the Whitburn and Blackburn seat about a year ago.
So what do the police actually say? A Police Scotland spokesperson says quote "Information has been received and is being assessed". That's not a criminal investigation. Not yet. It's the first look, to see if one is needed.
And what about the Electoral Commission? It says checking whether a return is accurate isn't its job, or the returning officer's job. It says that sits with the police.
So what does Reform UK say? A spokesperson in Scotland calls it simple administrative errors, from a new party still learning the ropes. The spokesperson says every person involved regrets not showing enough diligence, and has since handed over the missing information. Reform UK, the national party, did not reply to The Ferret's request for comment.
Scottish Labour and the Liberal Democrats were a lot less forgiving. Jackie Baillie, the Scottish Labour deputy leader, says quote "Reform has repeatedly shown a complete disregard for following the rules that apply to us all". Willie Rennie, the Liberal Democrat MSP, went further, saying the party reeks of sleaze.
And this is not Reform UK's only brush with the law right now. The Metropolitan Police is separately looking into claims that senior figures in the party broke the rules on foreign donations. That came after an undercover investigation by Channel 4 News about a month ago. Reform UK's own internal review found it had not broken the law on that one.
So what happens now in Scotland? Nobody knows yet. It's not known if police will take further action. Not known exactly what information the candidates failed to hand over. Not known if the Electoral Commission will take its own separate action. And not known whether any of this was deliberate, or just administrative, as Reform UK describes it.
No Holyrood seat is in question here. But for a party that calls itself a serious alternative to the old parties, nine candidates missing the basic paperwork of an election is its own kind of answer.
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