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Local party failed to gather voter information

By LUCY MILLARD - 13-03-1999

Three telephonists were employed to work on a voter identification scheme in Newark because the town's Labour branch had not done their share of the work, it was alleged on Monday. 

=MP Mrs Fiona Jones said the Newark constituency had already shown some interest in the idea because of Mr Dave Clark, secretary of the Southwell branch who was a computer expert.

The Retford branch had already gained a lot of information and managed to reach the stage where they had more or less complete records.

Mrs Jones said they had a target of 30,000 people to call. She said Balderton branch did most of its share and so did Southwell.

But she said: "No work was ever done in Newark. I am not sure we recognised the problem until much later - February 1997."

They had asked for the work but it had not been done, she said.

Said Mrs Jones: "There was a hole in the data and we decided we needed to complete it. The solution was to have three women who came into the office to work at an accelerated pace."

They were each set a target of 40 calls an hour and were told to ask which way people would be voting to discover who was a Labour supporter.

She said the voter identification could be used to help discover Labour supporters who had not been to the polls yet and a call could be made to remind them to go.

Mrs Jones said the information was also sent to London headquarters where it could be used to send out information to encourage people to join the party or to financially support it.

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