Conduct Of The Hon Member For Harborough

EDM number 1693 in 1993-94, proposed by Keith Vaz on 31/10/1994.

That this House notes that on Thursday 27th October, the honourable Member for Harborough tabled EDM 1675 and that on Friday 28th October he withdrew that EDM on grounds of inaccuracy; further notes that he wrote to the honourable Member for Leicester East apologising for the inaccuracy; regrets that the new EDM he has tabled also contains errors of fact; considers it a cheek that, having tabled such Motions, the honourable Member was unavailable for comment on the mornings of either 28th October or 31st October as he was engaged in his other employment at the Bar, and wonders how he can spare the time to come to the House in view of his busy legal practice; deplores the attempts by an honourable Member who draws most of his work as a barrister from defamation cases either for or against newspapers to seek to influence the Press Complaints Commission over a complaint that is currently before it; notes the serious allegations of malpractice against the honourable Member in respect of his constituency duties which are currently being investigated; hopes that in future the honourable Member will show to his clients a better standard of accuracy and availability than he shows his parliamentary duties; and calls upon the Secretary of State for National Heritage to ask the Press Complaints Commission for a report on the matter, the Prime Minister to publish the report on the conduct of the honourable Member and on the honourable Member to apologise for his disgraceful conduct.

This motion has been signed by a total of 4 MPs.