Annex 83
Letter to Mr Colin Hall, Chairman, Leicester
East Constituency Labour Party, from the Parliamentary Commissioner
for Standards
Mr M Kamal has informed me that you have written
to him saying that you are in receipt of a copy of his letter
to me of 17 April 2000. Would you kindly let me know from whom
you received it. I assume you did not receive it anonymously as
you would not have written to Mr Kamal in the terms you did had
this been the case. However, I would be grateful for the details
and if there is any question about the identity of the sender
I would be pleased to receive the copy you received with its envelope.
For the sake of completeness I should point
out that the House of Commons has conferred upon the Select Committee
on Standards and Privileges by Standing Order the power to send
for persons, papers and records, and the Committee reserves the
right to use those powers in furtherance of its own inquires or
the Commissioner's if it should prove necessary to do so. In addition,
evidence supplied for the purposes of this inquiry, and any related
correspondence, is covered by Parliamentary privilege and remains
confidential unless and until it is published by the Committee
on Standards and Privileges to whom I shall report. If such evidence
or correspondence were published or divulged to a third party
without the express authority of the Select Committee, that would
be likely to constitute a contempt of the House. Any attempt to
obstruct my inquiry by any means could also be treated as a contempt.
17 May 2000
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