My eye-opening five years as Westminster’s chief sleazebuster

When Kathryn Stone became parliament’s standards chief in 2018 some MPs still expected “deference and subservience”.

If some of the people she investigated thought they would get that from her then “they didn’t do that for long”, Stone quips.

The bullish smile that flashes across Stone’s face as she recounts this “culture shift” belies the intensity of her five-year stint as the parliamentary commissioner for standards — or Westminster’s sleazebuster-in-chief.

There was Keith Vaz, the Labour bigwig suspended for six months in 2019 before deciding to stand down as an MP anyway. There was John Bercow, the former Commons speaker now banned from parliament for life.

Paterson is suing the government over the case investigated by Stone

LEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGES

But most of all there was Owen Paterson. The fallout from Stone’s investigation into the former cabinet minister is seen by some Conservatives as the moment Boris Johnson’s premiership began to collapse.

Certainly the ten days between Stone’s finding that Paterson had committed an “egregious” breach of lobbying rules and his decision to resign as an MP were staggeringly fraught. Paterson’s volley of attacks on Stone’s investigation, arguing that it did not “comply with natural justice”, led to Johnson trying to pause the verdict and overhaul the standards system Stone policed. He failed amid a Conservative revolt.

In her first ever interview about her time as standards commissioner, Stone admitted that the episode in 2021 was “difficult and challenging” for her.

“It was difficult. It was tough,” she said. “But we knew the allegation. We’d seen the evidence. We analysed that carefully. We took it to the [standards] committee, that committee agreed. What happened then was politics. We were caught up in the middle of it. I was in the crosshairs of all sorts of people. But I knew the decision was the right one.”

Stone said she was motivated throughout the maelstrom by messages of support she received from members of the public. “We received a large volume of cards, letters, emails from members of the public,” she said.

“Those cards took effort. Somebody had to get a card, get an envelope, find the address, get a stamp, write inside. And I was so moved by some of the messages that people sent. And sometimes they would write their name and their age in brackets afterwards. It was much older people who would write their age.

“That was really supportive and generous of those people to take the time to write to me and to the team to say, you keep doing what you’re doing.

“Because what you’re doing is what we want you to do — and hold people to account. That idea of speaking truth to power is something that I’ve learnt in the last five years might not be the easiest thing to do. But it’s always without exception, the right thing to do.”

Paterson consistently denied wrongdoing and is now suing the government at the European Court of Human Rights over the case.

Paterson is not the only politician who has found themselves on the sharp end of Stone’s inquiries and responded vituperatively. Last year Stone judged Bercow guilty of 21 out of 35 complaints about bullying by House of Commons staff during his tenure as Speaker.

John Bercow appointed Stone, who would go on to investigate claims of bullying against him

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILL

Her findings against Bercow were upheld by an independent expert panel which said he was a “serial bully”, a “serial liar”, and that if he were still an MP it would have recommended expelling him from the Commons.

Bercow claimed Stone was presiding over a “kangaroo court,” accusing her of following an “unjust” and “amateurish process” where the “dice were loaded”. He complained that Stone, 59, a former charity chief executive and victims commissioner in Northern Ireland, was not a lawyer.

Asked about Bercow’s criticism, Stone responded: “Forgive me a wry smile to myself. Mr Bercow appointed me — and he forgot to say that in his many and various interviews where he was critical of me. So he appointed me knowing very well that I already had a reputation for being independent, impartial, thorough and fair.”

In fact Stone had first tried to investigate bullying allegations against Bercow in May 2018, just five months after he gave her the job. The standards committee, which oversees her work, narrowly voted to block Stone from doing so — a decision opposed by the committee’s lay members.

The row led to lay members being given full voting rights on the committee, a change which Stone says is “hugely important”.

But there are more changes Stone, who completed her term at the end of last year and is now chairwoman of the Bar Standards Board, would like.

Backbench MPs must register donations, hospitality and other financial interests with the standards commissioner within 28 days. A new list of MPs’ interests is published fortnightly.

Government ministers, however, can opt to register hospitality and some gifts with their department instead, with their interests then recorded in a less detailed format which is only published quarterly.

“One of my real frustrations has been not being able to persuade government, parliament about the need to have a kind of equality of arms, if you like, between ministers’ financial interests, and backbench MPs’ financial interests,” Stone said.

“For me, it can’t be right that ministers are held to a different level of accountability. In fact, a lower level of accountability than backbench MPs. That can’t be right because ministers are in an elevated position and much more, it seems to me, at risk of there being a perception of influence.

“And I really do believe that ministers should be held to the same level of accountability as backbench members of parliament.”

In 2021, for example, Johnson said he would not declare a free holiday he received at a Spanish villa belonging to the Goldsmith family in the MPs’ register, instead recording it through the ministerial process. Had he agreed to list it on the MPs’ register he would have had to offer a monetary value for the gift.

Johnson is now one of the many MPs making significant money in addition to their work as an MP, another issue which has periodically crossed Stone’s desk. “Members of parliament having outside interests can bring a very rich seam of knowledge, skill and experience to this place,” she said.

“When it tips over to the point where being a member of parliament is your second, third or fourth job, then that’s problematic for me. And it’s also problematic for members of the public who elect a representative and expect their interests to be the priority of the member of parliament and not somewhere down the pecking order.

“So I think when MPs are thinking about outside interests, there needs to be a consideration of what that means for their ability to carry out their democratically elected mandate here, which brings enormous responsibility and is an enormous privilege.”