PEER TO APOLOGISE OVER CONTRACT
A senior Conservative peer has been ordered to apologise to the House of Lords after he signed a contract agreeing to lobby MPs and peers on behalf of a Caribbean tax haven in breach of Lords rules.
The Lords sub-committee on peers' conduct found Lord Blencathra's contract with the Cayman Islands' government breached the Lords' code of conduct banning peers from entering into agreements involving the provision of "parliamentary services" for payment.
However he escaped more serious sanction after the sub-committee accepted that he had made clear that he was not prepared to lobby Parliament when he took on his consultancy role with the Cayman Islands, in spite of the "ostensible commitments" in the contract .
In his proposed apology to the House, Lord Blencathra - a former Conservative chief whip in the Commons where he sat as David Maclean - acknowledged that he should not have entered into the contract, even though he had no intention of providing parliamentary services.
"I misled myself into thinking that, since it was understood that I would not be making representations in reality, then the wording did not matter. But words do matter; I was wrong and I apologise to the House for that misjudgment," he said.
"I deeply regret having breached the code in this way and the embarrassment to the House that I recognise is caused by such conduct. I offer the House my sincere apology."
He said that when the contract, which he originally signed in 2011, was renewed the following year the reference to the provision of parliamentary services was dropped. The contract ended in March of this year.
The case was referred to the Lords Commissioner for Standards, Paul Kernaghan, following a complaint by the Labour MP Paul Flynn after details of the contract between Lord Blencathra's company, Two Lions Consultancy Ltd, and the Cayman Islands finance ministry - said to be worth £12,000 a month, were reported in The Independent.
Lord Blencathra also referred himself to the commissioner.
The sub-committee noted that other recent cases where peers have engaged in paid lobbying had resulted in them being suspended from the House, but it accepted that Lord Blencathra's case was different.
"The critical distinction, as we see it, between Lord Blencathra's case and cases where members were suspended for failing to act on their personal honour is that, whereas in those cases the commissioner found a clear willingness to breach the code by lobbying for reward, here the breach consisted of the inclusion in a written contract of a clause which both sides may very well have understood and agreed was not in fact to be implemented," it said.
It is expected that Lord Blencathra will make his apology in a personal statement in the House of Lords on Thursday after peers have considered the sub-committee's report.
