Former health secretary Matt Hancock is expected to apologise to Parliament for breaching the MPs’ code of conduct by attempting to influence the Commons standards tsar.
Mr Hancock committed the “minor breach” by writing an unsolicited letter to Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Daniel Greenberg in defence of senior Tory Steve Brine, who is under investigation for an alleged breach of lobbying rules.
The Commons Committee on Standards said: “This was a minor breach of the Code; however, Mr Hancock has still not acknowledged his mistake.”
The committee recommended that Mr Hancock should make a personal statement to apologise to the House of Commons and the commissioner.
He should also attend a “briefing on his obligations under the code with the commissioner”, the committee’s report said.
The committee said Mr Hancock did not set out to breach the rules, had no prospect of personal gain and did not act with malice by writing to the commissioner.
But it said the former Cabinet minister had displayed a “lack of attention to the rules” and “it is concerning that a member with this experience has not taken account of these provisions of the code”.
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