LONDON — Matt Hancock has been ordered to apologize to the House of Commons after writing an “unsolicited letter” in support of a fellow MP under investigation by parliament’s standards watchdog.
A report by the Commons’ committee on standards found that the former U.K. health secretary — more recently found eating animal appendages on a popular reality show — committed a “minor” breach of the code of conduct for MPs.
He has been told to apologize to the House and the watchdog with a personal statement in parliament — and attend a “briefing on his obligations” as an MP. Hancock will make the statement in parliament later Monday.
The finding concerned a separate lobbying investigation by the parliamentary commissioner on standards into the Tory MP and former Health Minister Steve Brine.
In March this year, Hancock “sent the commissioner an unsolicited letter” about Brine’s case, the committee said. But paragraph 14 of the code of conduct for MPs prohibits the lobbying of the commissioner “in a manner calculated or intended to influence their consideration of whether a breach of the Code of Conduct has occurred, or in relation to the imposition of a sanction.”
It pointed out that this rule on lobbying the standards watchdog has been in place since 2009.
Now an independent MP after he was stripped of the Conservative whip last November over his reality TV turn, Hancock is no stranger to the headlines.
Most recently, a tranche of his private WhatsApps came into the possession of the Daily Telegraph newspaper — after Hancock shared them with a journalist he was writing a book with.