REDDITCH’S MP has apologised after breaching the House of Commons Code of Conduct during the May local elections.

A complaint was made to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards that Rachel Maclean had used her parliamentary email address for party political campaigning.

This action is against the Code and states in the 2021 members handbook that ‘it isn’t acceptable to use parliamentary digital service for activities that could be considered party political campaigning’.

In a report published by the Commissioner, it states that Ms Maclean acknowledged the use of her parliamentary email address had breached the rules and apologised.

The email was sent on May 4 to her mailing list of 2,429 contacts and said: “As a Conservative MP I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that I'm encouraging you to vote Conservative today.

“And I'm not just encouraging you to vote Conservative because I am Conservative, it's because I passionately believe Conservatives in Redditch and Wychavon are the only teams in this election with positive and ambitious plans.”

Following the email, a formal inquiry was launched on May 16 where it was discovered a member of Ms Maclean’s team had sent the message to those on her mailing list on May 4 and was an ‘administrative error’.

The Commissioner’s report notes that Ms Maclean knew the email has been sent but would not have authorised it if she has been aware it had been sent from her parliamentary email address and not from a political email system.

She said: “I accept full responsibility for what is sent out in my name, and this should not have happened.

“I apologise unreservedly, I would not have intentionally misused parliamentary digital services or any other resources provided for my parliamentary duties.

“I have taken several steps to prevent the recurrence of the breach including ensuring all of my team members undertake additional training so they are more familiar with how the mailing system works; updating the email address my newsletter is sent from, so it no longer comes from my parliamentary email and I have put in my place additional audit procedures within my office team to ensure that mistakes of this nature do not occur again.”

Redditch Labour says they don’t know what effect the rule breaches had on the outcome of the elections.

A spokesperson for the party said: “Standards are clearly written down on what is acceptable practice in election campaigns and, unfortunately, to challenge the effect of the Conservative breaches of the rules would be an expensive exercise.

“They know this and think they can get away with cheating due to the cost of appeals.

“This election rule-breaking brings the local Conservative Party into disrepute.

“We hope that, in future, the local Conservatives will train their agents and staff to abide by the rules so that they don’t hold an advantage over other parties with their voter appeal exercises”.

Following the publication of the Comissioner's report, Rachel Maclean said: “I immediately accepted a minor administrative error had been made and I apologised to the Commissioner.

"This error hasn’t happened before, and it won’t happen again as new processes have been put in place to ensure it can’t.”

Four Redditch Conservative candidates were also found to have breached election rules for distributing personal election materials containing their official Redditch Borough Council email addresses.

Redditch Borough Council said they were made aware of the issue at the time and took action to resolve the matter.