Lee Anderson tried to make out the security guard he told to “f*ck off” was lying before issuing a grovelling apology to them in parliament.
The Reform UK MP was found to have broken bullying and harassment rules by a parliamentary watchdog after he allegedly told the guard “f*** off, everyone opens the door to me, you are the only one” when he was told he needed to have his pass checked at the gates to the Westminster estate.
A complaint about the incident was upheld by Parliament’s standards commissioner, which accepted Anderson’s evidence that he had faced “challenging personal circumstances” on the day in question and that his “unacceptable behaviour” was “not planned or premeditated”.
But notes uncovered from the Independent Expert Panel show Anderson initially tried to suggest the security officer had lied by denying he ever swore at them.
In an appeal, the Reform UK man said:
“My reasons are quite simple, the allegations made against me are untrue and there is absolutely no evidence at all to prove or disprove what I said during the brief exchange I had with the security guard”.
As John Nicolson noted on X, it proves that rather than being gracious in apologising, it had to be “dragged out of him”.
