Mark Pack

What does “completely cleared” mean?

By | Wed 24th September 2008 - 8:26 pm

A few days ago Iain Dale wrote:

On 9 June, Sunny Hundal of Liberal Conspiracy made a complaint to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, accusing Tory MP Nadine Dorries of using public funds to pay for her blog. He wrote a 21 page submission of evidence.

Last week, Nadine posted on her blog saying that she had been completely cleared of any wrongdoing.

This rather puzzled me at the time because the part of the complaint that I’d read closely looked to me an open and shut case of the rules having been breached. So how come Nadine Dorries was “completely cleared”?

Ah, well you might think that “completely cleared” has only one meaning. But it would appear not, because Sunny Hundal has now posted this from the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, ruling on the complaint:

The rules of the house, however, do require Members to make a clear distinction between websites which are financed from public funds and any other domain. At the time of your complaint, Mrs Dorries’ website did not meet that requirement. Nor was it appropriate that she use the Portcullis emblem on the weblog given its contents. And the funding attribution on Mrs Dorries’ Home Page should have been updated to reflect that the funding came from the Communications Allowance and not from the Incidental Expenses Provision.

“Completely cleared” or found to have breached the rules three times? It’s so easy to confuse the two 🙂

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