Labour Chief Whip Sir Alan Campbell is the latest Member of the Shadow Cabinet to be placed under investigation by Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. The announcement states that Sir Alan is being investigated for “Use of information received in confidence in the course of the Member’s parliamentary duties”, and “Use of facilities [parliamentary email address] provided from the public purse”. Usually we’d have to wait for Kathryn Stone’s report before we learnt the details…

Guido, however, understands the investigation concerns Sir Alan sending an emails from his parliamentary requesting that constituents complete a “summer survey”, to get “thoughts on important local and national issues”. Whilst the email itself wasn’t partisan, the link to the survey took constituents to his Labour MP website, which then collected both the constituents voting intention, and contact details on behalf of the local Labour branch — should users agree. The website also installed Labour Party cookies on the user’s computer. 

A relatively minor mistake, though Guido would have thought a veteran like Sir Alan — with 25 years of Commons experience — would have known better…