the Privileges and Standards Committees indicates, there is considerable overlap between contempts and misconduct. It is therefore legitimate for the Privileges Committee, in considering sanctions, to take account of Standards Committee practice, while making allowance for differences as well as similarities between standards and privileges.
207. Based on precedent, or by analogy with the Standards Committee’s practice, the following options are available to the Privileges Committee in cases of contempt by a Member:
- No further action.
- Requiring an apology in writing, which would normally be published, or on the floor of the House by means of a point of order or a personal statement.
- Recommending admonition or reprimand.
- Recommending withholding of a Member’s salary or allowances for a specified period, even if the Member has not been suspended.
- Recommending suspension from the service of the House for a specified period (during which time the Member receives no salary and must withdraw from the precincts of the House).
- Recommending expulsion from the House.
208. We note that suspension from the House for 10 days or longer following a report from the Committee of Privileges engages the provisions of the Recall of MPs Act 2015, requiring a recall petition to be opened in the Member’s constituency.[1] There are no precedents for the Committee of Privileges recommending a sanction against a Member since this Act came into force.
209. There are no formal criteria for imposing sanctions in privileges cases. In 2020 the Standards Committee published a list of aggravating and mitigating factors it would take into account in Code of Conduct cases.[2] We have taken them into account.
210. We have concluded above that in deliberately misleading the House Mr Johnson committed a serious contempt. The contempt was all the more serious because it was committed by the Prime Minister, the most senior member of the government. There is no precedent for a Prime Minister having been found to have deliberately misled the House. He misled the House on an issue of the greatest importance to the House and to the public, and did so repeatedly. He declined our invitation to reconsider his assertions that what he said to the House was truthful. His defence to the allegation that he misled was an ex post facto justification and no more than an artifice. He misled the Committee in the presentation of his evidence.
- ↑ See Second Report, paras 12–14 and Appendix, for Mr Speaker’s ruling that approval by the House of a motion following a report from the Privileges Committee has the same effect for these purposes of one following a report from the Standards Committee.
- ↑ Committee on Standards, Seventh Report of Session 2019–21, Sanctions in respect of the conduct of Members (HC 241), published 21 July 2020, p23 (Table 1: Aggravating and mitigating factors)
