TORY MP and former health secretary Matt Hancock has been told to apologise to Parliament for breaching the Commons Code of Conduct.
The MP for West Suffolk was found to have broken the rules by sending a letter to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Daniel Greenberg, who was carrying out a separate investigation into another Tory MP.
Hancock “sought to influence his consideration of whether a breach of the Code” had been committed.
The Standards Committee said it “agrees with the Commissioner that Mr Hancock breached paragraph 14 of the Code of Conduct for Members, which concerns lobbying the Commissioner, when sending an unsolicited letter to the Commissioner on March 28.”
It said the breach was minor but it has been recommended that Hancock apologises to MPs.
It added: “This case underlines that respect for the Code and the processes for investigating potential breaches of the Code, which were voted for by the House, is an important and necessary part of the Code, and that it expects Mr Hancock to reflect his understanding of this in his apology.”
Hancock told the Committee in written evidence: “While I do not agree that the letter I write [sic] was a breach of these new rules, I do accept that the Commission [sic] has found any breach to be minor and inadvertent.”
