Boris Johnson was criticised today by Parliament’s standards watchdog for breaching Commons rules on declaring financial interests.
Kathryn Stone, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, accused the former Foreign Secretary of not “demonstrating the leadership” expected of a senior MP in sticking to Commons rules.
The Commons Committee on Standards instructed Mr Johnson to attend a “full briefing” from the Registrar of Members’ Financial Interests and warned of more serious sanctions if he flouts the rulebook again. It came after the Uxbridge and South Ruislip MP failed to register a 20 per cent share of a property in Somerset within the 28-day timetable of acquiring it.
The standards watchdog concluded last autumn that Mr Johnson had on four previous occasions recently been late in registering financial interests.
“While there is no suggestion that he has at any time tried deliberately to conceal the extent of his interests, this latest breach reinforces the view ... that he has displayed ‘an over-casual attitude towards obeying the rules of the House’, in conjunction with ‘a lack of effective organisation within [his] office’,” the committee concluded today.
“We find it particularly regrettable that Mr Johnson gave an assurance to the Commissioner that his registration of financial interests was up to date, and within a very short period it proved not to be.”
Mr Johnson said he had misunderstood the rules relating to the threshold above which an interest has to be declared.
