Conservative Party faces ICO probe and fine of up to £500,000 for sending unwanted membership sign-up emails

• An email from the Conservatives' director of campaigning encouraged recipients to join the party.
• In a second email, the party said the first message had been sent due to a technical error.

The Conservative Party faces an investigation by the UK's data watchdog after mistakenly sending an email encouraging recipients to become members of the party.

The Conservatives were fined £10,000 by the Information Commissioner (ICO) in June 2021 for sending 51 marketing emails seeking membership sign-up to people who had not consented to receiving them.

Sending marketing emails to people who haven't asked for them is a breach of the UK's Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR).

On Friday afternoon, Insider received an email from the party's director of campaigning, Tony Lee.

Two hours later, the party sent a further email with the subject line "Please ignore our last email".

The second message said: "Due to a technical issue, we may have just sent you an email asking you to join the Party. Please disregard this message, which was sent in error."

The party's head of membership said the technical issue had been resolved, but did not go into further detail. It is unclear how many people got the emails.

A spokesperson for the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) told Insider: "We are aware of an email sent by the Conservative party membership team and will be making enquiries."

Other recipients of the email who were not expecting to receive such a message shared screenshots on Twitter and said they had made complaints to the ICO.

The low-tax message of the party was also questioned, with the Institute for Fiscal Studies noting that Rishi Sunak has "announced bigger permanent tax increases in his two years in office than Gordon Brown managed in ten."

One expert on data protection law said that the Conservatives could be treated more harshly by the ICO because the party had broken the same rule in the past, for which it was fined £10,000. Fines can reach up to £500,000.

James Castro-Edwards, Counsel at Arnold & Porter, told Insider: "The fact that they're a repeat offender is likely to be viewed as an aggravating factor.

"It is the sort of factor the ICO could take into account in calculating a monetary penalty."

The previous ICO investigation took nearly two years to conclude.

Of that investigation, the ICO said the Conservatives "repeatedly failed to provide responses within time periods set, even when those periods were extended," and which it said was not "satisfactory compliance with reasonable requests from the statutory regulator."

The Conservative Party did not respond to multiple requests for comment.