An embarrassment for the Prime Minister

The Standards and Privileges Committee has now reported on the complaint against Gordon Brown and it has concluded that Brown did breach the rules, albeit inadvertently:

“We conclude that Mr Brown should not have sub-let part of his accommodation paid for from Parliamentary allowances. However, neither Mr Brown nor the Labour Party derived any financial benefit from this arrangement and there was no intention to deceive. We accept that Mr Brown’s breach of the rules of the House was inadvertent and that he took steps to rectify it as soon as it was drawn to his attention. Mr Brown has apologised and in our view no further action is necessary.”

Seeing as Brown did not profit from this arrangement and given the mood in Westminster today, I doubt this is going to be a major scandal. But it is going to cause Brown some damage, headlines like ‘Brown found guilty of breaching Commons rules’ will not do his reputation any good.