The Crown Prosecution Service has put out this statement. It’s from Nick Vamos, its head of special crime.

We have considered files of evidence from 14 police forces in respect of allegations relating to Conservative Party candidates’ expenditure during the 2015 General Election campaign.

We considered whether candidates and election agents working in constituencies that were visited by the Party’s ‘Battle Bus’ may have committed a criminal offence by not declaring related expenditure on their local returns. Instead, as the Electoral Commission found in its report, these costs were recorded as national expenditure by the Party.

We reviewed the files in accordance with the Code for Crown Prosecutors and have concluded the tests in the Code are not met and no criminal charges have been authorised.

Under the Representation of the People Act, every candidate and agent must sign a declaration on the expenses return that to the best of their knowledge and belief it is a complete and correct return as required by law. It is an offence to knowingly make a false declaration. In order to bring a charge, it must be proved that a suspect knew the return was inaccurate and acted dishonestly in signing the declaration. Although there is evidence to suggest the returns may have been inaccurate, there is insufficient evidence to prove to the criminal standard that any candidate or agent was dishonest.

The Act also makes it a technical offence for an election agent to fail to deliver a true return. By omitting any ‘Battle Bus’ costs, the returns may have been inaccurate. However, it is clear agents were told by Conservative Party headquarters that the costs were part of the national campaign and it would not be possible to prove any agent acted knowingly or dishonestly. Therefore we have concluded it is not in the public interest to charge anyone referred to us with this offence.

Our evaluation of the evidence is consistent with that of the Electoral Commission. While the role of the Commission is to regulate political finances and campaign spending, the role of the CPS is to consider whether any individual should face criminal charges, which is a different matter with different consideration and tests.

Cllr Martin Shaw, an independent elected this month to represent the Seaton & Colyton ward, said on his Facebook page that it was “crunch time” for the bid for a judicial review.

He added: “The Town Council [Seaton] has decided it cannot underwrite the first stage of the review and the League of Friends is not allowed to do so. So I am launching a very urgent community crowdfunding campaign to raise sufficient funds to go to the solicitors on Monday and give them the go ahead. The rush is necessary because of the legal time constraints.”

Cllr Shaw told Viewsnews.co.uk that he had donated £1,000 towards the target of £20,000, and that he would use the rest of his £10,000 councillor’s allowance to underwrite the campaign while donations came in.

He added that solicitors were preparing a letter before action to send to the NEW Devon Clinical Commissioning Group by the end of this week, giving the case why their decision-making was flawed.

At a meeting earlier this month (2 May) Seaton Town Council voted against proceeding with legal action against the CCG.

In a statement on its website it said the potential cost of undertaking a judicial review was at least £100,000. “Neither Seaton Town Council or Seaton Hospital League of Friends are in a financial position to underwrite this cost pending public donations. Both parties, having considered the advice given, felt the case for judicial review was not as strong as they hoped it would be.”

It added: “However, the town council and the Seaton Hospital League of Friends will continue to do everything that it can including lobbying the Devon County Council Health and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee, the local MP and the Secretary of State over the matter.”

The hospital had its general medical beds removed in 2015 but the building may now be at risk too.

Mr Venner, who is my Conservative opponent in the Devon County Council elections, tweeted: “Guess its (sic) good to spread gloom – stop hindering progress we need an evolving NHS fit for todday (sic) not 1970.”

It isn’t the first time Mr Venner has lashed out at local people trying to save Ottery Hospital.

After an event I organised at the hospital last May which Hugo Swire MP attended, Mr Venner referred to Ottery St Mary Hospital in a tweet as a “geriatric home.”

In a few days the Conservatives will no doubt send a leaflet around pledging their support for local hospitals and the NHS.

It is important that people are aware that in the Otter Valley, their Conservative candidate holds views that may be at odds with those set out in his leaflet.

The council decided to relocate its headquarters in March 2015 to new offices in Honiton and Exmouth and to finance the move, East Devon District Council had agreed to sell its Knowle headquarters to Pegasus Life Ltd for £7.5m.

The reality is that in all George’s Osborne’s positions he is being employed as a figure head rather than the man that gets his hands dirty. At the Evening Standard I suspect the Deputy Editor, who is a trained journalist, will be doing most of the leg and legal work! At Blackrock, his main job will be to advise on economic matters and to represent the company in a social capacity. As for abandoning his constituents, I shouldn’t think the hours he puts in will be any less than those of when he was Chancellor which, I might add, was also a second job and quite a considerable one at that!

George has formidable talent and phenomenal energy. Even when he was Chancellor he was moonlighting, attending the daily Downing Street meetings morning and evening and running two election campaigns. Then that is the sort of person he is. Fingers in lots of pies. He just can’t help himself. He was never going to flounce off into the wilderness when Theresa May sacked him. And he might just have taken the Standard job as a fight back for the metropolitan electorate with whom he is identified and possibly even for the ‘remoaners’; the 48% whose voice have been drowned out by the Brexit brigade. George Osborne could well become the Standard bearer for the entrepreneurs, the disaffected young, the internationalists with his new platform of power, a vacuum that was looking to be filled. Who knows, only time will tell, but I suspect it is a clever and counter intuitive move by the paper’s proprietor Evgeny Lebedev.

The scrutiny of politicians working arrangements is now so intense – boosted by a voracious social media – that I fear it will deter good people going into politics. Sometimes we just can’t win! I remember the days when George Osborne (who had never had a job outside politics) was accused of being a member of the political class, a ‘professional politician’ who had no understanding of the real world because he only operated in the Westminster bubble. Ironically now he is a mere backbencher he is being criticized for going out to work!

The problem lies in a misunderstanding that being an MP is a job. It isn’t really, it is more a representative role. A back bencher’s task is to represent his or her constituents, make laws and hold the Government to account. It is not an executive function. With about 550 others doing the same thing, it should not require full-time labour. Not everyone can be on a committee for example. Representing constituents involves case work, and this is often shared with a dedicated team of back room staff who are invaluable in sifting through the ‘system’ and its diverse bureaucratic obstinacies. Although the MP bears overall responsibility in what he signs off.

We are also expected to be accessible – not just by holding surgeries but also across an array of events in our constituencies. Then there is the task of upholding the broader constituency interests – for instance working with business and local government in seeking to ensure the local economy thrives. Surely each MP’s effectiveness should be measured by their output and their results not by the false measure of how many hours are put in. Still less should there be envy over how much money they earn. Besides, if the electorate find their MP lazy or underachieving or completely distracted elsewhere they have the ability to kick him or her out.

Being a Minister of course is entirely different, that is a job, a job in which you run, or help run, a Government department, therefore any other work would be a conflict of interest, which is why it is disallowed.

If an MP uses his time efficiently he has plenty of room for other interests. I, for example, have some paid outside interests but I’m also Chairman of the Conservative Middle East Council (CMEC) and Deputy Chairman of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council (CWEIC); both these posts keep my interest in foreign affairs active and enable me to ask informed questions to the executive on foreign matters.

What about another Devon MP, Geoffrey Cox, the Conservative MP for Torridge and West Devon? He earned over half a million last year as a barrister. Have his constituents suffered as a result? His surgeries in Torrington and Tavistock are fairly regular. Even though more case work comes via email these days. Geoffrey is still lobbying for the Appledore Shipyard and like all of us is active on hospital closures and funding for Devon schools. Only last week he arranged a meeting with the Health Secretary about the loss of beds at Holsworthy Hospital.

So are the parliamentary Quangocrats who think they are echoing the views of the public really going to stop MPs coming to parliament who are practicing doctors? or stop barristers like Geoffrey who bring an eagle legal eye to legislation? I hope not. The Commons is a much richer place for the experience it holds. If they do, I can assure you, many of the brightest and best will leave only to be replaced by politically obsessive, self promoting campaigners that see politics as a career not a vocation.

And as Michael Gove pointed out if we believe in a free press, should proprietors not have a right to appoint who they see fit as editor, without the executive or anyone interfering in that decision? Should unelected and undemocratic bodies in Parliament make decisions – waving the banner of morality and standards – about MPs? Are they really superior to the decisions made by the the electorate who have the democratic right to kick out an underperforming MP? I don’t think so. Parliament is, and should remain sovereign.

In 1909 there was a warning from Sir William Bull, the Conservative MP for Hammersmith, against a proposal to pay MPs. Sir William predicted the next thing would be that local councillors would be paid and there was a danger of “a very distinct class of professional politicians.” Well, both have happened. A local councillor was always meant to be a pillar of the local community who devoted his or her spare time to public service; now we have some councillors who do nothing else.

In 1995 Lord Nolan’s Committee on Standards in Public Life declared:

“A Parliament composed entirely of full-time professional politicians would not serve the best interests of democracy. The House needs if possible to contain people with a wide range of current experience which can contribute to its expertise. The onward march of the professional politician may be an irresistible feature of modern life, but we believe that nothing should be done by way of institutional arrangements which would hasten it.”

In my opinion that conclusion remains valid.

I fear much of the uproar surrounding Mr Osborne’s new jobs tells us more about salary envy than anything else, and that is not a good basis for an argument.