Inquiry urged over Corbyn’s foreign visits

The Labour leader could be suspended as an MP if he failed to declare travel and hospitality over £600

JEREMY CORBYN enjoyed a string of foreign visits without declaring them officially in Parliament, prompting claims that he could have breached rules and be suspended as an MP.

The Sunday Telegraph can disclose a list of at least nine overseas visits by the future Labour leader between 2007 and 2014, none of which was declared in the register for members’ interests. Mr Corbyn is already facing an investigation for failing to declare his separate trip to Tunisia in October 2014, when he was accused of holding a wreath close by the graves of the terrorists who massacred 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Mr Corbyn has always insisted he laid the wreath to commemorate the victims of a 1985 Israeli bombing of the PLO headquarters in Tunis.

MPs are required to disclose “any travel or hospitality received in the course of a visit outside the UK, if it relates in any way to their membership of the House or their parliamentary or political activities”. The threshold for declaring a visit at the time was £600. Under the current rules MPs who are found to have breached the rules in the most serious cases can be suspended from the House for 30 days.

A spokesman for Mr Corbyn said he does not believe the trips needed to be declared to Parliament. But Mark Francois, a former Tory minister, made a formal complaint to Kathryn Hudson, the House of Commons standards commissioner, asking her to investigate whether there had been a “serious breach” of Parliamentary rules

The code of conduct also makes clear that MPs must “always be open and frank in drawing attention to any relevant interest in any proceeding of the House or its committees, and in any communications with Ministers, Mem- bers, public officials or public office holders”.

Mr Corbyn’s visits are charted in his weekly column in the Morning Star. They show that in 2007 Mr Corbyn made two visits – to a conference on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in Vienna, as well as a trip to Palestine and Jerusalem. In 2010 Mr Corbyn visited the West Bank and Israel with a delegation from Middle East Monitor.

In the following year, 2011, he staged four visits – two in February to Lebanon and Tunisia, followed by Mexico to a meeting of the Special Congress of the Democratic Revolutionary Party in August and an anti-Nato protest meeting in Germany. In 2012 Mr Corbyn visited Greece where he attended a rally with the Left-wing firebrand Alexis Tsipras. Six months before his wreathlaying trip to Tunis – Mr Corbyn visited Morocco with John Hilary, who at the time ran the War on Want charity.

Two years later in October 2016 Mr Hilary quit the charity after it emerged it had organised an “Israeli Apartheid Week” at universities. Mr Hilary was then hired as Labour’s trade adviser in January 2017, despite the Charity Commission launching an inquiry.

A spokesman for Mr Corbyn said: “Jeremy has visited around half the countries in the world to promote peace and justice. We are confident that all declarations that met the threshold were made.” On the appointment of Mr Hilary as a trade adviser, the spokesman said: “We don’t comment on staffing matters.”

Mr Hilary said in 2016 that his decision to leave War on Want was taken months before the row about Israeli Apartheid Week, adding that “any implication there is another reason… is pure fantasy”. He defended supporting Israeli Apartheid Week saying that “standing up for the rights of Palestinians fits squarely with our work as a registered charity”.

Jim Sheridan MP was suspended by Labour yesterday over comments he apparently made online. He was allegedly responsible for a social media post which spoke of his loss of “respect and empathy” for the Jewish community amid the row about anti-Semitism.