Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Daniel Greenberg has launched yet another investigation… this time into the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. The probe concerns a potential failure to declare an interest, amid questions over whether a childcare business his family has shares in stands to benefit from new policies in last month’s Budget. A Downing Street spokesperson said:
“We are happy to assist the Commissioner to clarify how this has been transparently declared as a Ministerial interest.”
Greenberg’s only been in the job since January…
UPDATE: Angela Rayner makes a fair point
“This Government’s failure to update the rules or publish a register of ministers’ interests in nearly a year has left a transparency black hole which is enabling the Prime Minister and those he has appointed to dodge proper scrutiny of their affairs. If Rishi Sunak has got nothing to hide, he should commit to publishing the register before May’s elections so the public can see for themselves.”
It turns out it’s quite useful to be a luvvie of the chattering metropolitan classes. Despite being found guilty of breaching sleaze rules in the Lords a couple of days ago, you’d be hard-pressed to have read anything about Lord Barwell’s standards breach in the mainstream press. Guido would know – he completely missed the report’s publication…
On the February 2nd, a Lords Standards investigation into Theresa May’s former Chief of Staff concluded he broke the House’s rules on declaring potential conflicts of interests, after a complainant pointed out he’d failed to publicise his ‘Gavin Barwell Consulting Limited’ personal service company on his register of interests.
When responding to the Standards Commissioner’s initial email, Barwell explained he was told he only had to “voluntarily declare” the service, “but only if I did so for all my clients”. Interestingly he chose at that point to declare he was in the process of applying for a leave of absence from the House, which he has now taken…
The investigation was cut and dry. The Commissioner concluded Barwell broke paragraph 12 of the Code of Conduct owing to him not ensuring his entries in the Register of Interests were correct and up to date.
“While the context of Lord Barwell’s discussion with the Registrar of Lords’ Interests about the registration requirements in November 2021 is not completely clear, he did express a clear intention to register all his clients at that time but failed to see through that intention.”
“In the circumstances, as well as correcting his entry in the Register of Interests, I proposed that a letter of apology to Baroness Manningham-Buller, Chair of the Conduct Committee, would be sufficient remedial action in this case. Lord Barwell has since written to Baroness Manningham-Buller (see Appendix 1) and updated his entry in the Register of Interests.”
At least now he’s taken a leave of absence he can focus his attention on persuading his paymasters at Clarion to stop screwing over tenants…
UPDATE: The day after the Standards Commissioner concluded Barwell broke the House’s rules on declaring potential conflicts of interests, Lord Barwell registered a new firm and gave his occupation as “Public Affairs Consultant”.
Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone has rapped Tory MP Duncan Baker on the knuckles for misusing House stationery for constituency letters earlier this year. Baker was ordered to apologise and repay £4,912.42 for sending newsletters on a “range of issues” – Commons stationery can only be used for specific issues – to his constituents last month. Back when posties actually delivered them…
In her decision published today, Stone said:
“After reviewing all the evidence, I found the Member’s use of Parliamentary resources to be a breach of paragraph 16 of the Code of Conduct for Members. I found that the letter constituted a newsletter on a range of issues which is prohibited by paragraph 3 of the rules for the use of stationery […] The Member told me that he had believed he was complying with the rules but apologised from the outset if he had inadvertently breached the rules.
He accepted my decision and undertook to refund to the House authorities the sum of £4,912.42 to reimburse the public purse the value of the misused stationery. I considered the breach to be at the less serious end of the spectrum and the Member’s remedial actions to be an appropriate outcome.”
Justice swiftly delivered…
The Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone has found Schools Minister Jonathan Gullis innocent of wrongdoing after an opportunistic shadow minister reported him over a £7,200 donation. On Monday The Guardian learnt that Gullis was under investigation, after Labour MP Stephen Morgan wrote to Stone arguing Gullis should have declared a donation towards his grammar schools campaign when arguing for their expansion as a backbencher. How on earth did they manage to get that story?
Just three days later, however, Guido learns Kathryn Stone has completely exonerated Jonathan Gullis. She will not be taking any action on these issues as she doesn’t believe there’s evidence that any rules were broken.
Meanwhile, in a follow-up letter to leaky shadow minister Stephen Morgan, she slams him for his Guardian briefing:
“I was disappointed to note that you appeared to share your letter with The Guardian newspaper before giving me an opportunity to review or respond to your complaint. I consider this behaviour to be discourteous to me and I trust that it will not be repeated.”
Stone explains that she believes any onlooker would have concluded Gullis’ words were not influenced by the donation, rather influenced by his campaign, and that there is no evidence the campaign was launched as a result of said donation. Guido looks forward to the Guardian’s equally prominent coverage of this development…
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…
The Commons sleaze commissioner has ruled Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy did break rules by failing to register fifteen events in his member’s register of interests declaration. Despite this not being Lammy’s first offence, Kathryn Stone has merely rapped him on the knuckles. Fifteen rule breaches certainly trump Sir Keir’s eight…
Stone’s investigation initially began looking at a complaint that Lammy had failed to register eight events between 7th October 2021 and 15th November 2021, however she uncovered a further seven interests that had also been registered late. While her inquiry was coming to a close, Lammy voluntary brought an additional failure to her attention…
The total payment for the eight initial events was a whopping £20,910
The seven further late registrations identified by Stone totalled an additional £14,884.88.
Lammy’s excuse? Ukraine and Coronavirus. Responding in a letter to Stone, he explains how the oversight occurred:
“During this time, the Leader of the Opposition made a surprise reshuffle of his shadow cabinet on 29 November 2021. I was appointed Shadow Foreign Secretary and immediately thrown into urgent briefings on the impending Russia-Ukraine situation which was developing at pace. This was also at the time of increasing coronavirus cases as a result of the Omicron variant which led to workers being encouraged to work from home.
My office was extremely busy dealing with the fallout from the pandemic situation in my constituency of Tottenham. Furthermore, my office manager, who usually has responsibility for such submissions, was on [details redacted] leave. As a result other staff in the office acted up to cover. This meant we were short staffed and extremely busy. This is why the submissions were overlooked and delayed.”
That’s a hell of an excuse…
