Bob Spink handed suspended sentence over election fraud
1 min read
A former Conservative and UKIP MP has been handed a six month suspended sentence after he was found guilty of election fraud.
Bob Spink, who had represented Castle Point in Essex, committed the offences in the borough during last May’s local council elections.
He was given a suspended sentence for two years and ordered to serve 150 hours unpaid work.
UKIP's election agent at the time, James Parkin, 39, of Canvey Island, who was also convicted of two counts of the same charge and had admitted two, received the same sentence at Basildon Crown Court on Friday.
Both men were ordered to pay £5,000 each towards the cost of the case.
At his trial last year, the court heard Spink had tricked the “elderly and infirm” into signing forms in April 2016, without explaining properly who he was or which party he represented.
Sentencing the pair Judge Ian Graham said: "This sort of offending undermines the working of democratic structures in this country.
"The democratic process depends on the good faith of those who engage in it, because a lot of what happens is of course quite difficult to police."
Spink, from Benfleet, Essex, was Conservative MP for Castle Point from 1992 to 1997, and again from 2001.
In 2008, he defected from the Conservative Party and joined UKIP, effectively becoming its first MP.
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