A Conservative MP faces a two-day suspension from the Commons and has been ordered to apologise for leaking details of a report on consumer credit to the payday loans company Wonga.
Justin Tomlinson, who until July was the junior disabilities minister, has been recommended to be suspended for two days by the Commons committee of privileges and told to make a personal apology to the house.
The MP did so immediately after the report was published, telling the Commons he had fully cooperated with the inquiry.
“Mr Speaker, I reiterate my apology, and I am very grateful that this house has allowed me to make this apology at the earliest possible opportunity,” he said. John Bercow, the Speaker, replied: “That’s the end of it.”
The committee’s investigation found that in May 2013, when Tomlinson was a member of the Commons public accounts committee (PAC), he used a personal email address to email a Wonga employee a draft report of a then-ongoing inquiry into the consumer credit market.
The Wonga employee, who had given evidence to the PAC inquiry, responded with comments from him and a colleague about the report, describing them as “areas we thought the committee might want to focus on”.
An exchange of emails followed about suggested changes to the report, after which Tomlinson got in contact with a PAC staff member, setting out the amendments, but not divulging their origin.
The investigation said Tomlinson, the MP for North Swindon, had immediately accepted he had made an error, and had apologised to the PAC.
Tomlinson had initially been supportive of a private member’s bill put forward by the Labour MP Stella Creasy to curb the activities of payday lenders, but eventually voted with the government.
Creasy, the MP for Walthamstow who sat on the PAC with Tomlinson, said: “I am disappointed to hear about this incident and cannot understand why Justin, if he was interested in strengthening legislation and helping those suffering at the hands of payday lenders, decided to send this document to Wonga instead of the Citizens Advice or other charities which work with those who have struggled to repay their debts.”
The affair was further complicated by the fact that two years before the email exchange, Tomlinson had helped arrange for Wonga to provide £30,000 of sponsorship to his local football club, Swindon Supermarine.
After the emails, in 2014 and 2015, the chairman of the club, Jez Webb, made six donations to his constituency party, which totalled about the same sum.
The inquiry report by Kathryn Hudson, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, said Webb had not been chairman of the club when the Wonga deal was negotiated, and there was no evidence the money was connected. Tomlinson had told the inquiry that the similarity between the sponsorship and donation amounts was a “horrible, horrible, coincidence”.
The report was, however, highly critical of the MP’s actions. The report’s conclusion said they amounted to “a substantial interference” in the work of the PAC.
Tomlinson told the inquiry he had not been given any formal training on the work of Commons committees, although he conceded he should have known sharing the draft report was a mistake, especially as it was protected by a password and had a “restricted access” marking.
The MP said he had used a private email as parliamentary staff had access to this inbox and “could be the ones to forward it to the newspapers or to other people”.
Hudson did say she found it “difficult to understand” why Tomlinson said he did not think the suggested changes to the report were Wonga’s view, as the Wonga employee made it clear he had consulted someone else and was putting forward the views of the company.
In mitigation, the committee found Tomlinson did not seek to have Wonga’s views explicitly shape the report. The MP has described his actions as the “result of my own naivety and stupidity” over the confidentiality of committee papers. The report added: “We are concerned that a member of a select committee was able to be in such a position.”
The privileges committee only has the power to recommend a suspension from parliament. This will be debated and voted on as soon as parliament returns on 10 October after the party conference season.
