Report comment

Of the report of the Commissioner for Standards in the House of Lords, Lord Hain is reported to have commented “I’m grateful to the standards commissioner for finding that the complaint was entirely false.”

The complaint was that Lord Hain had failed to declare his appointment in 2016 as Adviser to Ince Gordon Dadds LLP, the law firm acting on the behalf of the Telegraph Media Group Limited in its dispute with Sir Philip Green. That was entirely true.

The explanation given, which the Commissioner accepted, was that Lord Hain was unaware of the involvement of Ince Gordon Dadds in the case, although their involvement is plain on the front page of the judgement published just two days before he made his statement to the House. Lord Hain explained he had not read the front page of the judgement before making the statement which was implicitly critical of that judgement and made express reference to the “injunction preventing publication of the full details of a story which is clearly in the public interest”

One would have hoped for a higher standard of curiosity on the part of those who exercise the privileges attaching to their role which would have prompted perusal of the judgement before making the statement, just as one needs to read the report of the Commissioner before observing that Lord Hain’s précis is somewhat disingenuous.