THE Liberal Democrats failed to correctly declare their General Election campaign spending in Ceredigion in their national party’s return, an Electoral Commission report has found.

Expenditure for the campaign to re-elect Mark Williams in the county in 2015 was one of several investigated by the commission.

The party has been fined the maximum levy of £20,000 for the breaches, while the case against the party’s top campaign official has been referred to the police.

The commission found that 307 payments totalling £184,676 were missing from the party’s spending return.

While the commission said in the report that there is “no suggestion that the data reported by the candidate and agent within each candidate return was wrong”, it found items of expenditure in Ceredigion that appeared to have been attributed to the UK party by Mr Williams which could not be found in the national return.

A spokesperson for Mr Williams said that the findings did not relate to “expenditure being incorrectly declared in Ceredigion”, but that errors were made at the national level.

Mr Williams did not want to comment on the report.

There are strict limits on national and local campaign spending, and parties must provide all expenditure details and where they have been allocated.

Where spending applies to both a party and a candidate’s campaign, the spending must be split accordingly between campaigns.

The party said that “human error and failures of process” were to blame, but Plaid Cymru AM Simon Thomas, who was an MP until he lost his seat in Ceredigion to Mr Williams in 2005, said: “The Liberal Democrats in Ceredigion should apologise to voters for misleading them over their expenditure.

“I hope the police will now investigate following the recommendation of the Electoral Commission."

A Liberal Democrat spokesperson said the mistakes had been caused by “issues with a small number of local accounting units”.

He said steps were being taken to “ensure these mistakes were not repeated”, and that the party would “co-operate fully with any investigation”.

“We always endeavour to ensure our reports of national campaign expenses are completed in full, in good time and according to all applicable rules,” he added.

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