Reply to The Speaker
from the Chairman of the Committee on Standards and Privileges
You wrote to me on 1 March to ask the Committee on
Standards and Privileges to give consideration to the responsibilities
of Members who received leaked copies of select committee reports
before publication.
The Committee has discussed the matter you referred
to us and entirely shares your view that the fundamental responsibility
of a Member who finds himself or herself in this position must
be to act in a way which does not impede the committee in the
discharge of its responsibilities to the House. In our judgement
the Member ought to make no use of leaked committee papers and
should return them without delay to the clerk of the committee.
We may have more to say on this subject once we have
completed our current inquiry into the leak from the Foreign Affairs
Committee.
10 March 1999
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