Former Conservative MP Angela Browning, former Liberal Democrat MP David Howarth, former SNP MP and MSP George Reid and ex-Labour HQ staffer Roy Kennedy have been appointed as Electoral Commissioners by Parliament (see news release here).

These are the first ‘political’ appointments since the laws governing the Electoral Commission were changed to permit people with recent political activity to become commissioners.

Roy Kennedy’s appointment may cause some comment as he was the Labour Party’s Director of Compliance since 2005, a period during which there were many controversies over the Labour Party’s approach to finances. For example, there were no prosecutions over the David Abrahams donations, but that was because of contradictory information from Labour which led the CPS to conclude that, “Enquiries by police highlighted inconsistencies in the evidence which meant that the prosecution would not be able to present a reliable account of what had taken place.”