Adrian Sanders, Liberal Democrat MP for Torbay, today apologised to Parliament after a member of his staff leaked a sensitive document.
From This is Devon:
And the MP’s researcher is set to be barred from Westminster for 28 days for “serious” contempt in passing on confidential information, and then trying to cover it up.
It follows an investigation by the parliamentary sleaze watchdog, which was called in after extracts from a draft report by the Culture, Media, and Sport Select Committee appeared in an article on the Guardian’s website.
The Committee on Standards and Privileges found no suggestion that Mr Sanders, who sits on the select committee, was directly responsible for the leak or involved in the unauthorised release of sensitive papers. It also noted his strong opposition to the practice of leaking, which in evidence to the inquiry Mr Sanders condemned as “reprehensible”.
But members of the cross-party committee concluded he was responsible “in a general sense” for the actions of his researcher, Tom Smith, who, unbeknown to Mr Sanders, was regularly passing on privileged documents to another researcher, which led to substantial parts of the draft select committee report into the BBC’s commercial operations being published.
The inquiry found no evidence that Adrian Sanders had explained to his researcher the importance of keeping select committee papers confidential, and had therefore failed in his responsibility to ensure their security. It was for being “insufficiently attentive” that Mr Sanders apologised today.
This is the full text of his statement to the House:
Mr Speaker, I would like to thank the Chairman of the Standards & Privileges Committee for his committee’s consideration of this case.
I would like to make it clear from the outset that I do not approve or seek to excuse the unauthorised disclosure of committee papers, and indeed the Standards & Privileges Committee was good enough to include in its report my initial comments to the inquiry, which was, and I quote from paragraph 71 of the report, –
“In a sense I am very angry about being here today. I have been a member of select committees and been a Member of this House now for 11 going on twelve years; I have never leaked anything; I think it is reprehensible to leak things…”
That remains very strongly my view.
I am grateful to the committee for its findings on page 17 of the report that I was not directly responsible for the unauthorised disclosure of the CMSC draft Heads of Report; that there is no suggestion that I was in any way instrumental in the forwarding of the papers, and that I was unaware that my assistant was receiving committee papers, still less that he was routinely forwarding them.
The committee found, however, that I should have explained more fully to my assistant his duties under rules of parliamentary privilege, and that I had a duty to explain to him the meaning of the confidentiality clauses in the contract he had himself signed.
Mr Speaker, this is an important lesson to all hon Members, and particularly those who sit on select committees. The Standards and Privileges Committee clearly feels that a specific duty of care rests on each of us to explicitly make these matters clear to every member of our staff, and I suspect many hon Members will not have done so presently.
In so far as I failed to make this plain to a member of my staff, I of course accept the conclusions of the committee and apologise to the House.
May I suggest to the Chairman of the Standards & Privileges Committee that it may be appropriate to send new guidance to every hon member, and indeed every member of staff, including House staff, to draw renewed attention to their terms and conditions relating to the confidentiality of select committee papers and whom they may be shared with.
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14 Comments
I’m a little confused – this looks like gross misconduct to me. Why is the staffer only being suspended for 28 days?
Exactly, and it’s not like researchers are hard to replace. No offence to any that read this, but you know it’s true.
We’re just averse to sacking people. Rennard, RYR, Tom Smith, all of them can go quietly.
Read the report before jumping to conclusions. As a new researcher eager to please Tom agreed to a request from another MPs office to get himself added to the distribution list for CMS select committee papers. The committee clerks didn’t question his request as I am a member of the committee. Perhaps they should have. Consequently I had no idea Tom was receiving the papers and passing them on to another office. Tom naturally saw nothing wrong with passing parliamentary papers from one MPs office to another for their information. He did not know that the person he was passing the information to was in turn passing it on to another person who leaked a document to the press. The actual leaker eventually owned up and apologised, admitting that Tom was totally unaware of any leak to the press. Tom deserves understanding, not calls for his sacking.
Adrian Sanders
And – just out of curiosity – what about the “and then trying to cover it up” part?
Fair enough Adrian but a) I was only asking and b) you could have stated as much in your statement to the House.
Herbert, if there were an appeals process Tom would be able to challenge that. But this is Parliament and there isn’t. The committee is made up of MPs from across the House:- 5 Labour, 3 Conservatives, 1 PC and 1 LD who set aside their party political affiliation in order to search for the truth and administer justice. They act as investigators, judge and jury. I guess the settled view of Parliament is that with honourable members in charge there shouldn’t be a need for an appeals process.
However, Tom’s Union is considering legal action against the committee for denying him the right to advice and representation, for exceeding their power over a members’ employee, and failing to provide an appeals process.
James, to have challenged any aspect of this committee’s report on the floor of the House could have been considered a contempt of Parliament for which the penalty is severe. That’s why I apologised to the House for not having explained to Tom that select committee documents are especially confidential.
There is something very wrong about trying a member of staff on a blog, and I think it is wrong to do so. Adrian has explained the situation and it would be wrong for us to pass judgement on something we ultimately know little about.
The thing that strikes me about this is that the culture of secrecy runs deep in Whitehall and Westminster and even affects those who ought to be immune. I cannot fathom what this researcher has done wrong – so what if a draft report of the Culture Committee gets into the Guardian? It’s hardly earth shattering.
Perhaps if Mr Smith had written a report making up the existence of weapons of mass destruction and using that as an excuse to invade another sovereign state he’d have got off scott free.
I stand by my questions. The original post did not address the issue in the same way that the hon member now has, for which I am grateful, nor the level of Tom’s naivety in dealing with sensitive documents. It is also true that in a similar corporate environment Tom would not have escaped with just a one-month suspension, though arguably the role of the other MP’s office here is decidedly murky.
You don’t leak documents early unless there is a serious public interest re expenses or other whistleblowing. Early drafts from select committees are only going to prejudice what comes afterwards.
Actually there’s another issue here. By self-policing and denying representation, the committee have allegedly broken the law. If Adrian’s researcher wins his case, then surely it’s another nail in the coffin for this? Could you imagine the outry if this was, say, one of the banks!
Also, as (at the moment) researchers are technically employees of the MP, then could there be an issue with regards to who has conducted the disciplinary interview (since that’s what it was)?
Why has the ‘office of the other MP’ that actually did the leaking not come into the public domain?
I agree with Dominic-this open forum is surely not to post articles regarding members of staff.
I am particulary concerned that as Tom is considering legal action and conversations such as the one Helen initiated may not be helpful in that sense.
It appears that this young researcher may be a scapegoat – his action in forwarding this report appears to have been requested by a senior person, and I am interested as to why the actual “leaker” of the report has received little censure. He appears to have been the least significant link in the chain and I respect Adrian for supporting him here.
This is a storm in a teacup. In all parties members of select cttees and their staff give party spokesmen a heads up on the contents of forthcoming reports. Technically they shouldn’t but they do. I would imagine that is what this was. It obviously shouldn’t have been given to the press ahead of launch but that is not primarily the fault of Adrian’s researcher.
It is, in any case, a long way short of Labour sel com chairs who negotiate the contents with ministers. Yes, Mr Vaz, I’m thinking of you.