High Court to rule on Phil Woolas Commons challenge

Former minister Phil Woolas finds out today if he has been successful in his High Court bid to overturn a decision stripping him of his Commons seat.

A specially convened election court declared void the general election result in Oldham East and Saddleworth.

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

But at a recent hearing in London, Mr Woolas's legal team asked three senior judges to rule that the election court misdirected itself in law and made a flawed decision.

Lord Justice Thomas, Mr Justice Tugendhat and Mrs Justice Nicola Davies will give their ruling at noon.

The legal challenge was brought on for hearing as a matter of urgency to ensure the seat does not go too long without an MP.

Labour - which immediately suspended former immigration minister Mr Woolas from the party - said it would delay calling a fresh election pending the legal fight.

Mr Woolas has been accused by lawyers for political opponent Mr Watkins of employing a strategy to get elected "of the basest kind".

He was found guilty of illegal practices under election law over comments made in his campaign material that Mr Watkins tried to "woo" the votes of Muslims who advocated violence and that he had refused to condemn extremists who advocated violence against the Labour 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" and Mr Woolas, who beat Mr Watkins by just 103 votes in a bitter campaign, had "no reasonable grounds for believing them to be true and did not believe them to be true".

It was argued before the High Court that 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.

But a QC for Mr Watkins submitted that the election court was not only entitled but "undoubtedly right" when it made its decision.