Commons anger as plans to suspend David Laws are leaked

MP David Laws could be banned from Parliament for seven days as a disciplinary measure following an investigation into parliamentary expenses, according to leaked information. The final decision of the Standards and Privileges Committee is not expected until tomorrow.

It is also believed he will be asked to apologise to Parliament and pay back tens of thousands of pounds. The Liberal Democrat MP for Yeovil was alleged to have claimed £40,000 to pay rent for his boyfriend James Lundie.

In total, with bills and maintenance claims, Mr Laws claimed in excess of £100,000. A police investigation was dropped and handed to Parliamentary Standards Commissioner John Lyon. After Mr Lyon decided that rules over expenses had been broken, a discussion on an appropriate punishment was held by a committee of MPs.

The revelation about his expense claims was the catalyst for his ministerial resignation in May 2010, just 17 days into his role as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. In that time he had impressed both sides of the coalition Government, and Prime Minister David Cameron said that he hoped to bring Laws back into the Government “soon”.

This looks less likely after today’s leaked information. It would signal another negative development for the Liberal Democrats as they look to reassert themselves in the coalition Government after failings in the local elections poll and a massive loss in the AV referendum.

Will David Laws be the first victim of post May 5th elections new coalition order, blogs Channel 4 News Political Editor Gary Gibbon? His friends are worried that what they see as partial leaks may be misrepresenting his case and creating an atmosphere in which he can't be reappointed to government whatever the report says. 

Lib Dem allies always wanted the benchmarks for judgement to be (a) was Laws' motivation privacy or profit and (b) has he cost the taxpayer any more money than he would have done if he wasn't trying to protect his privacy? If he passed those tests, they hoped, he could be quickly restored to a government post with the Tory leadership turning a blind eye to how this would take the Lib Dems over their quota of ministetrial posts.

But Tory MPs are lobbying No. 10 to say that he shouldn't be let back in anyway. The numbers of Lib Dems in the government shouldn't rise, they argue. But what really motivates many is that they feel he'd be getting off a lot more lightly than many Tory MPs who were cermoniously humiliated by the Tory leadership at the time of the expenses saga and the original Telegraph revelations.

Parliament outrage

Today’s “leak” of information, which was broadcast on Sky News, was described by Commons speaker John Bercow as a “rank discourtesy”.

Mr Bercow instructed the Standards and Pribileges Committee to investigate and “establish how this came about because it is something which I think all Members who care about this place would unite in deprecating in the strongest terms for the unfairness to the Member concerned and the rank discourtesy to the institution of the House of Commons”.

Liberal Democrat deputy leader Simon Hughes said that any leak was “clearly a breach of the rules of the house”.