A TORY MP who oversaw the removal of the names of 2000 Westminster staff from an official transparency register has been forced to apologise for failing to declare he was employing his own wife.
Alberto Costa, chairman of the Commons Standards Committee, failed to declare his wife’s employment during a debate about the staff register.
The i paper reports that six months after this, the committee recommended that staff names should no longer be published.
The former system, which had been in place since 1993 until earlier this month, saw MP’s staffers names being recorded on a regularly updated document alongside any financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.
The removal of the names has been slammed by journalists who said it was a “disaster for transparency”, with critics warning that it will make it harder to expose conflicts of interest, foreign influence and lobbying in Westminster.
Costa employs his wife, Dr Maria Costa, as part-time office manager and her position has been properly recorded in the Tory MP’s register of interests since 2016.
But on July 16, the South Leicestershire MP spoke in the House of Commons during a debate on a report by the Standards Committee about the Register of Interests of Members’ Staff, but he did not declare that his wife worked for him.
He said in the Commons that the committee was aware of concerns raised by staff about having their names placed publicly on a register, and that they would consider if any changes needed to be made.
The Standards Committee would later agree that all staff names, including that of Costa’s wife, should be replaced by job titles in the public register.
Daniel Greenberg, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, later concluded that Costa should have declared his wife’s position as it could be reasonably thought that his words were influenced by her position.
Greenberg added that the breach had been “inadvertent” and the case was not referred to the Standards Committee.
Costa apologised to the Commons on April 22, saying: “I inadvertently failed to declare a relevant interest: that I employ my wife, who is subject to the rules about the Register of Interests of Members’ Staff.”
“This was in breach of the House’s rules, and I apologise to the House for this error,” he added.
The new rules will see the number of people required to register their interests expanded from around 2000 to roughly 4000, including staff with parliamentary passes and access to Westminster IT systems.
Despite this, there will be less publicly known information about them.
The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac) said that serious allegations of “Chinese espionage” had been exposed through the register.
The committee said the change was needed due to concerns around security and privacy, particularly for staff working in MPs’ constituency offices.
They said the loss of transparency was proportionate to the security issues.
