Standards Commission report

Thanks to Guido Fawkes for advising us of the results of an investigation by Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone into a Labour complaint against Schools Minister Jonathan Gullis.

The independent commissioner has found Gullis innocent of wrongdoing after what looks to have been a vexatious complaint from a Labour shadow minister concerning a £7,200 donation.

On Monday The Guardian learnt that Gullis was under investigation, after Labour MP Stephen Morgan wrote to Stone arguing Gullis should have declared a donation received towards a grammar schools campaign he had previously run while he was a backbencher, arguing for more grammar schools.

Guido Fawkes asks how the Guardian got that story.

Three days later, however, Guido Fawkes reports that Kathryn Stone has completely exonerated Jonathan Gullis. She will not be taking any action on these issues as she doesn’t believe there’s evidence that any rules were broken.

Meanwhile, in a follow-up letter to leaky shadow minister Stephen Morgan, she criticised him for leaking the story to the Guardian briefing, writing

“I was disappointed to note that you appeared to share your letter with The Guardian newspaper before giving me an opportunity to review or respond to your complaint. I consider this behaviour to be discourteous to me and I trust that it will not be repeated.”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the...
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more