Woolas hopeful in bid to clear his name

PHIL Woolas said freedom of speech was at stake as he launched a High Court bid to overturn the historic decision to strip him of his Commons seat.

The former Immigration Minister said he was hopeful that he could clear his name as he arrived at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

A specially-convened election court this month threw out the general election result in Oldham East and Saddleworth which Mr Woolas won by 103 votes.

It removed him as an MP and banned him from standing for election for three years after finding him guilty of deliberately lying about Liberal Democrat rival Elwyn Watkins.

Mr Woolas’s legal team yesterday asked three senior judges to rule that the election court misdirected itself in law and made a flawed decision.

The challenge is being dealt with urgently to ensure the seat is not left without an MP for too long. Mr Woolas was found to have broken election law after his election leaflets said that Mr Watkins tried to “woo” the votes of Muslims who advocated violence. He also said that Mr Watkins had refused to condemn extremists who advocated violence against the ex-minister. The election court judges ruled that, although made in the context of an election campaign, the comments clearly amounted to attacks on his opponent’s “personal character or conduct”.

In his submissions to the High Court yesterday, Gavin Millar QC, argued the election court had misdirected itself on the true meaning and effect of the words “personal character or conduct”.

As a result it had wrongly held that Mr Woolas’s statements, which were about the “political conduct” of his opponent, were also statements about his personal character or conduct.

Mr Millar contended the election court’s interpretation violated Mr Woolas’s right to freedom of expression under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Mr Millar argued: “It gives insufficient protection, in particular, to his freedom to attack his opponent in relation to his campaigning and his attempts to win the support of voters at the election.”

Helen Mountfield QC, appearing for Mr Watkins, is submitting that the strategy employed by Mr Woolas “was of the basest kind.”

She states in a written argument before the judges that Oldham East and Saddleworth was a constituency “in which the divide between Muslim and non–Muslim had seen riots in 2001 and deep religious divisions since then.

“It is no part of the law to protect freedom of expression where that freedom is abused to make one section of the community angry about, and fearful of, another on the basis of falsehoods.”