Not feeling quite so sanctimonious now are we, Capt Crasheroonie Snoozefest?
Starmer guilty of breaching code of conduct EIGHT times
SIR Keir Starmer was last night found guilty of breaching the MPs’ code of conduct by failing to properly register more than £120,000 in land deals, corporate donations and Premier League tickets.
The Labour leader – who had insisted he was ‘absolutely confident’ no rules had been broken – was forced to apologise to parliamentary ethics watchdog Kathryn Stone after the errors were uncovered by a month-long probe.
The inquiry found that Sir Keir had failed to register eight interests worth more than £120,000 within the mandatory 28- day window. He blamed the late declarations on an ‘administrative error’ by his staff in a letter to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner on June 21.
The investigation reviewed the Labour leader’s register entries from the past year and identified seven interests that were not declared on time.
During the course of the probe, Sir Keir – dubbed ‘Captain Crasheroonie Snoozefest’ by Boris Johnson – also told the commissioner he was selling a plot of land worth more than £100,000, but hadn’t registered it yet as he didn’t have an exact value.
Miss Stone decided to include
‘Simultaneous investigations’
the sale in her inquiry. She Stone found Sir Keir had failed to properly declare the eight interests and had breached paragraph 14 in the House of Commons’ Code of Conduct for MPs.
A £18,450 book advance from publisher Harper-Collins was declared late, along with royalties for two legal books published before he became an MP.
He also failed to declare on time an invitation to the Crystal Palace directors’ box for a match against Arsenal, and £1,416 worth of tickets for a Watford game.
A Labour Party spokesman said: ‘Keir Starmer takes his responsibilities to the Register very seriously and has apologised to the commissioner for this inadvertent error. He has assured the commissioner that his office processes have been reviewed to ensure this doesn’t happen again.’
The probe made Sir Keir the first Leader of the Opposition to face simultaneous investigations by the police and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, as he was at the time waiting for a verdict from Durham Constabulary on whether he broke lockdown rules last year in the so-called ‘Beergate’ scandal.
Police eventually cleared Sir Keir and his deputy Angela Rayner of any wrongdoing.
Miss Stone noted that the ‘breaches were minor and/or inadvertent, and that there was no deliberate attempt to mislead’.