Are standards slipping on the Standards Committee?

Ah, the Standards Committee. Where would we be without the parliamentary watchdog? The 14 men and women who sit on this panel have a noble task: policing behaviour within the Commons by overseeing the work of the Parliamentary Commissioner, Kathryn Stone. 

Half the committee are lay members, who cannot ever have been members of either chamber; the others are seven MPs drawn from across the House. But unfortunately it seems that some of these MPs have been exhibiting less than exemplary behaviour that you might expect from those in such an exalted position.

Take the committee’s chair, Chris Bryant. He was forced to declare in June that, almost two years late, he realised he should register an overseas visit to Poland. Bryant was subsequently forced to apologise, after being found in ‘breach of paragraph 14 of the Code of Conduct for Members of Parliament.’ In his evidence he declared that ‘I simply cannot explain how the registration slipped my mind in 2019.’