‘Careless’ Matt Hancock ordered to apologise to the Commons for trying to lobby Parliament’s standards watchdog to help a Tory MP being probed over paid consultancy work
Former health secretary Matt Hancock has been told to apologise to Parliament after lobbying its standards watchdog while it investigated once of his former Tory colleagues.
The politician and reality television star, who lost the Conservative whip earlier this year, was censured for a letter he wrote on behalf of Steve Brine.
He was found to have committed a ‘minor breach’ of the MPs’ code of conduct by writing an unsolicited letter to Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Daniel Greenberg in defence of the Winchester MP, who is himself under investigation for an alleged breach of lobbying rules.
Mr Greenberg told the Commons Committee on Standards that the breach was ‘likely due to inattention and carelessness rather than a deliberate attempt to subvert my inquiry’. There is no suggestion Mr Brine instigated the letter.
But the MPs said today that Mr Hancock, who was health secretary during the Covid pandemic, ‘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 politician and reality television star, who lost the Conservative whip earlier this year, was censured for a letter he wrote on behalf of Steve Brine.
He was found to have committed a ‘minor breach’ of the MPs’ code of conduct by writing an unsolicited letter to Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Daniel Greenberg in defence of the Winchester MP (pictured), who is himself under investigation for an alleged breach of lobbying rules.
Mr Brine is being investigated over claims he lobbied the head of the NHS on behalf of Remedium.
At the time in early 2021 the company was paying him £1,600 per month for eight hours work as a consultant.
The former health minister complained that he had been ‘trying for months’ to persuade the health service to take on anaesthetists via the firm.
The details were revealed in the tranche of leaked WhatsApp messages from Mr Hancock published by the Daily Telegraph.
In his letter to the commissioner, Mr Hancock said it was his ‘firm belief that what Mr Brine did was acting overwhelmingly in the national interest’.
‘Mr Brine contacted Ministers after the UK Government put out a call for help to the public to fight the unprecedented and serious pandemic. Indeed, both the then-Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and myself as Health Secretary were publicly encouraging anyone who could help in our national effort to come forward to help fight this virus – including specifically the recruitment of trained staff. For example, our ”Your NHS Needs You” campaign, launched in March 2020, called for a mass recruitment drive to help protect the NHS.
‘It is my belief that Mr Brine, like many people, did his duty and came forward to try to help the Government achieve our mission. He also made it very clear that he was a paid adviser to this company, so was not trying to conceal this information. Given the position he was in, it would have been inappropriate not to act.’
Mr Hancock denies that his letter breached the code of conduct, the Committee noted. In evidence he referred to Paragraph 14 of the code, which he breached, as a ‘new rule’, despite it being in place for 14 years.
The committee said he had acted to ‘lobby […] the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards […] in a manner calculated or intended to influence their consideration of whether a breach of the Code of Conduct has occurred’.
‘Mr Hancock has evidenced a lack of attention to the rules,’ it said in its report.
‘Mr Hancock is a former Cabinet minister and has been an MP for over 10 years. It is concerning that a member with this experience has not taken account of these provisions of the code.’
It also criticised him for making ‘a statement to the press on the investigation which showed a lack of attention to the rules on confidentiality’.
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