Derek Conway guilty of breaching standards
By Ian Dunt
Derek Conway, the Conservative MP who was thrown out the party for paying his sons out of his allowances, has been found guilty of breaching parliamentary standards, parliamentary insiders have indicated.
The ruling, by the parliamentary standards committee, refers to a second complaint against the Old Bexley and Sidcup MP, concerning his elder son, Henry.
Having already apologised on the floor of the Commons the last time the standards committee found him to have breached its rules he will not have to do so again, but he will have to pay back £3,800 write a letter of apology to the chairman.
But the committee did accept that his son had done some work and cleared him of three of the four charges.
“We note that Mr Conway has thus far failed to accept the commissioner’s findings,” the committee said.
“We expect him to apologise for his breach of the rules by writing to our chairman. We also recommend that Mr Conway be required to reimburse the House for the full cost of the overpayments to Henry Conway, totalling £3,757.83.”
In a statement, Mr Conway said he would comply with the sanctions and said he pleased to have been cleared of the three other charges.
“The committee has applied a judgment on the guidance to members which requires costs to have been ‘necessarily incurred’ and from the outset I have maintained that this is a subjective opinion, made with hindsight and that I had complied with the rules which existed at the time,” he said.
“The committee has within its power to reach such an opinion, therefore I have complied with its requirement to write to its chairman, Sir George Young, apologising for the breach of the ‘necessarily incurred’ rule.”
The first committee ruling against Mr Conway, in January last year, found there was “no record” of Mr Conway’s other son, Freddie, having worked in Westminster, and ordered the MP to pay back £13,000 along with a ten-day suspension.
The ruling forced David Cameron to strip Mr Conway of the Tory whip, effectively turning him into an independent MP.
Freddie Conway’s job, for which he received a part-time equivalent of a £25,970 salary, was previously occupied by his elder brother Henry, whose role today’s ruling focuses on.
The matter was referred to the police by the Liberal Democrat candidate for Old Bexley and Sidcup, Duncan Borrowman. Their investigation was cut short when the crown prosecution service decided a prosecution would be impossible, given the holes in the records.
Today’s ruling comes far later than expected, with Mr Borrowman at one point having to write to standards commissioner John Jyons to make an official complaint about its duration.
Today, Mr Borrowman said Mr Conway should resign with immediate effect.
“Derek Conway’s punishment is to pay back some money and write a letter of apology,” he wrote on his blog.
“Quite frankly, this is not enough. Derek Conway has done more than any other individual, and that is saying something, to bring disrepute on MPs and all politicians. In any other job Mr Conway would be sacked for gross misconduct.
“Derek Conway should go. And go now.”
Liberal Democrat leader of the House David Heath said: “Both the parliamentary commissioner and the Standards and Privileges Committee have gone out of their way to be fair and understanding to Mr Conway.
“He should now accept these findings and immediately pay back the public money which he has been judged to have used improperly.”
Mr Conway announced he would not stand in the next election after the first ruling, saying he did not want his “personal circumstances to be a distraction” from Mr Cameron’s leadership.
The affair set off a flurry of activity from the three main parties, as they tried to banish allegations of sleaze from Westminster.
But those allegations are now rearing their head again, with Peter Hain forced to apologise to the Commons earlier this week for failing to disclose donations to his deputy-leadership campaign.
