We have a further update on our legal battle to secure a public inquiry into wrongdoing during the EU referendum campaign.

Last October, Fair Vote UK issued a judicial review to challenge the Government’s unwillingness to establish a public inquiry into the conduct of the 2016 EU Referendum. We wanted to ensure that vital lessons could be learned from a public inquiry and applied in future referendums and elections, including through urgent changes in the law.

Much has changed since then and we have, with the advice of our lawyers, made the difficult decision to withdraw our case for a judicial review. 

Our case for a Public Inquiry has been made more difficult by the many different Parliamentary inquiries, reviews and government consultations that have started since we first started out legal battle. These investigations and initiatives, such as the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee’s Electoral Law inquiry; the government’s announcement of a range of new measures to safeguard UK elections; and the government’s Online Harms White Paper could possibly generate evidence and proposals that would address some of the issues that an EU referendum public inquiry would cover. We believe that the risk is high that the Courts will side with the government’s decision to reject the request for a public inquiry whilst these processes run their course. The decision to retreat has been hard but we are sure it was the right one given how likely it was that the court would refuse permission for our judicial review.

We are not giving up in any way our fight to uncover the whole truth about what happened during the 2016 EU referendum. We still believe that only a comprehensive public inquiry will get to the bottom of the wrongdoings during the EU referendum campaign. It is still crucial that the truth is exposed and decision makers are compelled to make the structural changes necessary to safeguard our democracy.