BEXLEY: MP Derek Conway reprimanded for second time

This time the payments involve his elder son Henry, whom he employed as a researcher in his House of Commons office between 2001 and 2004.

The Parliamentary Committee for Standards and Privileges, in a report published this morning, says Mr Conway, MP for Old Bexley and Sidcup, overpaid Henry for the work he did.

The committee said there were indications Henry who, at the time, was an undergraduate at the Courtauld Institute of Art in Westminster and lived at his parents' Westminster flat, had done some work for his father, although there was no hard evidence.

During the time he worked for his father, Henry was paid £35,744, which the committee says was "unnecessarily high".

Mr Conway told the committee chairman in a letter, that "he acted properly reflecting Henry's ongoing experience and good performance in the pay level set".

The committee says Mr Conway "demonstrated a serious lapse of judgement by an experienced Member of the House".

It concluded the breach of Parliamentary rules was not enough to suspend Mr Conway from the House for a second time, nor will he have to make a public apology from the floor of the House.

Instead, the committee said it expects Mr Conway to apologise in writing to the committee chairman and has recommended Mr Conway be asked to pay back the £3,757 he overpaid Henry.

Last year Mr Conway was censured by the committee for overpaying his younger son Freddie in similar circumstances.

Mr Conway had the Tory Whip withdrawn, was suspended from the House for 10 days, was ordered to make an apology in the House of Commons and to pay back more than £13,000.

The committee said there was little evidence that Freddie, an undergraduate at Newcastle University at the time, had done any work for his father.

Following that case, Duncan Borrowman, the Liberal Democrats' propsective Parliamentary candidate for Mr Conway seat, made a second complaint to the Parliamentary Commissioner about Mr Conway's employment of Henry.

He told News Shopper this morning the committee's recomended punishment was "nothing like he should receive".

He said: "If anyone else in any other line of work had fiddled the amount of money involved, they would have been sacked for gross misconduct.

"It is a shame that mechanism is not there for MPs."

He said when he made his complaint a year ago, he had also asked the Met. Police to investigate the case, but heard nothing.

Mr Borrowman said he still thought the police should investigate Mr Conway's activities for the possibility of deliberate fraud.

But Mr Conway told News Shopper: "The standards and privileges committee report has cleared me on three of the four complaints alleging breach of the rules of the House."

He said: "It accepted the Commissioner’s findings that there was a job for my son Henry to do; that he was able and qualified to do it and that he had (with independent and photographic evidence) been doing it."

He added:"The complaint is upheld with regard to the salary level paid to my son Henry over a period of 39 months from July 2001 and requires me to make a gross repayment of £3,757.83 to the House authorities, which I shall."

Mr Conway said Henry had been employed on the lowest grade of researcher/Parliamentary assistant and was, on average, paid at the mid-point pay-scale within that grade.

He said: "However the committee considered that he should have been at the entry level, with a two per cent annual uplift for the duration of his employment."

Mr Conway said: "The committee has applied a judgement on the guidance to Members, which requires costs to have been 'necessarily incurred' and, from the outset, I have maintained that this is a subjective opinion, made with hindsight, and that I had complied with the rules which existed at the time."

But he acknowledged the committee had the power to reach the opinion it has given, and said he has already written to committee chairman Sir George Young apologising for the rule breach.