UKIP has accused a rival party of allying itself with a pressure group to get around limits on campaign spending.

The party’s Bradford chairman, Jason Smith, said Labour candidates were using the anti-racism group Hope Not Hate to tell people not to vote Ukip in the forthcoming elections.

He said this meant they could effectively bypass legally enforced spending limits and allow them to outspend other political campaigns.

Mr Smith, the party's Parliamentary candidate for Bradford South, said Hope Not Hate had made battling Ukip in Bradford South a priority this year and he was concerned Labour was helping it with this push.

He said he had written to the Electoral Commission to "alert them of our concerns of disguised spending in Bradford".

Mr Smith said: "People want fair elections, they want to know that what is being sent to them is legitimate and fair, and we cannot have a situation where one party's candidates can effectively ignore the legal spending limits by dressing up one of their leaflets as being in some way independent of them."

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But a spokesman for the regional Labour party said the complaint was "a desperate attempt at attention-seeking from Ukip who find themselves looking on from the side-lines".

He said: "Labour candidates and volunteers deliver Labour leaflets, abiding by all campaign spending rules. What other organisations, such as Hope Not Hate, wish to print and distribute to people is up to them."

A spokesman for Hope Not Hate said it was a cross-party movement and that its 2015 election campaign was "entirely funded by individual donations".

He said: "No trade unions or political parties have provided funds.

"As we’re regulated by the Electoral Commission and guidelines laid down under the recent Lobby Act, we have no fear of scrutiny; as required by law, we’ll set down all our expenditure.

"In fact, we positively value Ukip's focus on Hope Not Hate: the more people see of us, the more we’ll be heard.

"We’re a cross-party movement, with the majority of our supporters belonging to no political party. We don’t distribute other parties’ materials during our leafleting or events, and no other political party is permitted to carry out any political activity during these events."

A spokesman for the Electoral Commission said election candidates were free to back non-party campaigns as long as they declared any money spent on their spending return after the election.

He said he would be writing to Mr Smith with some guidance on the rules.