The House of Commons standards and privileges committees are two distinct select committees that together uphold the standards of conduct expected of MPs.

Historically the committees were combined, and today they share the same seven MP members. But they perform distinct roles.

The committee on standards is a select committee of the House of Commons responsible for overseeing the rules of conduct for MPs and for recommending sanctions if those rules are broken. The committee’s primary function is to consider reports from the parliamentary commissioner for standards, who acts as the independent investigator into alleged breaches of the MP’s code of conduct.

The committee of privileges deals with “specific matters relating to privileges”. It investigates specific matters of breaches of privilege – such as an MP or minister deliberately misleading the House, or external interference in parliamentary business.

Composition of the committees on standards and privileges

The committees on standards and privileges are both cross-party bodies, with their MP members drawn from the government and opposition parties. The number of seats each party has is calculated to reflect the membership of the House as a whole.

A key convention is that the chair of the committee is always an MP from the main opposition party. The current chair of both committees is Alberto Costa.

The standards committee is also composed of seven MPs and seven lay members (non-MPs). These independent individuals, recruited through a public appointments process, now constitute half of the committee’s membership. This structure was designed to reduce the perception that MPs are ‘marking their own homework.’

The lay members are appointed for fixed non-renewable terms for no longer than six years.

Unlike the standards committee, the privileges committee consists only of the seven MP members. Matters of privilege are considered internal to the rights and traditions of the House itself.

The operation of the standards committee

When the parliamentary commissioner for standards investigates a complaint against an MP and finds that a breach of the code of conduct has occurred, their report is passed to the committee on standards, which considers the findings.

If the committee agrees that a breach has occurred, its principal power is to recommend a disciplinary sanction to the whole House of Commons. The severity of the recommended sanction depends on the seriousness of the breach.

Sanctions can range from requiring the MP to make a formal apology on the floor of the House, to the suspension of the member from all parliamentary duties for a set number of days. If a suspension of 10 sitting days or more is approved, this can trigger the Recall of MPs Act 2015. In the most extreme cases, the committee can recommend expulsion from the House.

The committee’s recommendations are not final. Any proposed sanction must be put to a vote in the House of Commons. It is the whole House that makes the final decision on whether to punish one of its members.

The operation of the privileges committee

Unlike the committee on standards, which reacts to an independent commissioner, the committee of privileges is responsible for conducting its own investigations into “contempts of parliament.” These are actions that obstruct or impede the House in the performance of its functions, such as an MP or minister deliberately misleading parliament.

The committee cannot launch an investigation on its own initiative. It is the speaker of the House of Commons who has discretion to decide whether the matter should have the precedence accorded to matters of privilege – i.e. that the issue should be given priority over other business set down for debate. MPs will make requests of the speaker to form a judgment on this point.

The MP who successfully petitioned the speaker is then invited to table a motion referring the matter to the committee of privileges for a full inquiry. The committee can only consider matters referred to it by the House of Commons as a whole.

During an inquiry, the committee has the power to “send for persons, papers, and records”.

The committee also has the power “to order the attendance of any member before the committee and to require that specific documents or records in the possession of a member relating to its inquiries be laid before the committee or any sub-committee”.

If the privileges committee finds that a contempt has been committed, the next steps follow a similar path to the standards committee procedure. It does not have the power to punish individuals directly. Instead, it publishes a report recommending a sanction to the House.

Just as with the standards committee, a recommended suspension of 10 sitting days or more from the privileges committee can trigger the Recall of MPs Act 2015, potentially leading to a by-election. The final report must first be debated and voted upon by the whole House of Commons, which retains the ultimate authority to either accept, reject or amend the committee’s findings.

The standards committee: the Owen Paterson Case (2021)

A recent case that demonstrates the significance of the standards committee is that of Owen Paterson in 2021.

In October 2021, the standards committee published a highly critical report of Paterson’s conduct. It found Paterson had committed an “egregious” breach of the parliamentary rules against paid advocacy.

The report recommended that Paterson, a former cabinet minister under David Cameron, be suspended from the House of Commons for 30 sitting days. This recommendation was severe enough to trigger a recall petition in his constituency under the Recall of MPs Act 2015.

The saga that followed, dubbed ‘Patersongate’, played a significant role in weakening Boris Johnson’s premiership.

The parliamentary commissioner found that Paterson used his position to benefit two companies for whom he was a paid consultant: Randox, a Northern Ireland healthcare diagnostics firm, and Lynn’s Country Foods, a Northern Ireland-based processor and distributor of sausages.

The standards committee, in its report, noted that “no previous case of paid advocacy has seen so many breaches or such a clear pattern of behaviour in failing to separate private and public interests.”

Paterson rejected the findings, claiming that the disciplinary process did not comply with “natural justice” and that he was innocent. He insisted that a “fair process would exonerate me”.

According to parliament’s standards procedure, MPs considered the report in a commons debate held on 3 November. The government, led by Boris Johnson, intervened. A three-line whip was imposed instructing Conservative MPs to support an amendment, tabled by Andrea Leadsom. The amendment noted “concerns expressed about potential defects in the standards system” and provided for a delay to Paterson’s suspension. It called for a new committee to review the entire standards system, including the potential for MPs to have a right of appeal.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the House of Commons, opened the debate on 3 November by moving a motion to approve the committee’s report and suspend Paterson. This stance was met with furious objections from opposition MPs.

Chris Bryant, the Labour chair of the standards committee, stated: “It is the very definition of injustice that one should change the rules or the process at the very last moment, and to do so for a named individual…

“Retrospective legislation to favour or damage an individual because they are a friend or a foe is immoral.”

Leadsom’s amendment passed by 250 votes to 232. The main motion, as amended, was passed by 248 votes to 221. The government therefore used its parliamentary majority to effectively override the findings of a standards investigation into one of its MPs.

The government was ultimately forced into a damaging U-turn just the following day, on 4 November. Plans for a new committee were abandoned. Announcing the climbdown, Rees-Mogg acknowledged the vote had “created a certain amount of controversy”. He said that a link “needs to be broken” between Paterson’s case and a wider overhaul of parliament’s disciplinary processes.

On 5 November, Paterson announced his resignation as an MP.

The privileges committee: the Boris Johnson Case (2023)

The privileges committee famously investigated whether Boris Johnson had deliberately misled the commons in his assurances that all pandemic rules and guidance had been followed in Downing Street.

At the start of business on 19 April 2022, the commons speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, announced that he would allow a debate to be held on a motion referring Johnson, the then prime minister, to the privileges committee. The speaker confirmed he had received letters from a number of MPs calling for this course of action, including the Labour leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer.

The matter, Hoyle said, concerned “the prime minister’s statements to the House regarding gatherings held at Downing Street and Whitehall during lockdown.”

Hoyle’s actions were consistent with the rules of the House, which requires that a matter of privilege must first be raised with the commons speaker. MPs then vote on a motion to refer the matter specifically to the committee of privileges for a full inquiry.

Hoyle stated: “I want to be clear about my role. First, as members will appreciate, it is not for me to police the ministerial code… My role is to decide whether there is an arguable case to be examined.

“Having considered the issue, and having taken advice from the clerks of the House, I have decided that this is a matter that I should allow the precedence accorded to issues of privilege.”

The commons subsequently debated a motion tabled by Starmer as leader of the opposition, calling for an investigation on 21 April 2022.

The motion noted “the issue of fixed penalty notices by the police in relation to events in 10 Downing Street and the Cabinet Office” and the prime minister’s assertions on the floor of the House, including that “all guidance was followed in No 10”.

It ordered that “this matter be referred to the committee of privileges to consider whether the right honourable member’s conduct amounted to a contempt of the House”.

The motion was passed without a division.

Johnson, following his resignation as prime minister, was called before the cross-party MPs to deliver evidence under oath.

In a combative performance, Johnson defended his statements, arguing that he had made them in good faith based on the advice he had been given by his officials. Having previously accepted that he delivered misleading comments in the commons, he insisted any such statements were delivered unintentionally or inadvertently.

In his opening statement, Johnson told the committee: “I am here to say to you, hand on heart, that I did not lie to the House.”

He added: “When those statements were made they were made in good faith and on the basis of what I knew and believed at the time.”

The Conservative-majority committee, chaired by the senior Labour MP Harriet Harman, repeatedly challenged Johnson’s defence. Harman was standing in for Labour MP Chris Bryant, who had recused himself due to his well-publicised criticisms of Johnson.

The committee focused focused on six gatherings between May 2020 and January 2021, and statements Johnson made to parliament about them: a gathering in the No 10 garden on 20 May 2020; Johnson’s birthday gathering on 19 June 2020; leaving celebrations on 13 November 2020, 27 November 2020 and 14 January 2021, and “cheese and wine” Friday night press office gatherings.

On 9 June 2023, Johnson announced his resignation as an MP after receiving a draft of the committee’s final report. In a statement, the former prime minister Johnson branded the committee a “kangaroo court” and claimed its year-long inquiry had delivered “what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination”.

The 106-page final report of the privileges committee, published a week later on 15 June 2023, found that Johnson committed “repeated contempts of parliament”.

The report also accused Johnson of having “breached the confidence” of the privileges committee by discussing its draft findings prior to their publication. The former prime minister was accused of being “complicit in the campaign of abuse and intimidation of the committee.”

The committee’s report stated that, had Johnson remained an MP, it would have recommended that he be suspended from the House of Commons for 90 days. This proposal, subject to approval by a vote of the commons, would have triggered a recall petition in Johnson’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency.

On 19 June 2023, the House of Commons voted 354 to 7 in support of the report, with a large number of abstentions. Rishi Sunak, the serving prime minister, was among those who abstained. The then-PM maintained that he had other commitments.

The committee subsequently published a special report on 29 June, concerning a “co-ordinated campaign of interference” in its work. This report named several Johnson allies, including former ministers Priti Patel, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries, accusing them of attempting to undermine the committee’s credibility and influence the outcome of the inquiry.

History and relationship with other standards bodies

According to Erskine May, the crucial guide to parliamentary practice, from the 17th century “it was the practice of the House to appoint a committee of privileges to consider specific matters relating to privilege referred to it by the House.”

In 1995, that committee was replaced with a committee on standards and privileges, with a remit expanded to include consideration of matters relating to the conduct of members. This change was made in conjunction with the House’s creation of the new post of parliamentary commissioner for standards. The commissioner was given the responsibility of overseeing the code of conduct for MPs.

The code of conduct for MPs was inspired and informed by the seven principles of public life set out by the committee on standards in public life (also known as the Nolan committee).

The committee on standards and privileges was split in January 2013 to allow the committee on standards to include independent lay members in their proceedings.

The committees on standards and privileges are separate from the Independent Expert Panel (IEP). The IEP is a fully independent body that determines sanctions in cases of bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct by MPs, which are investigated under a different process known as the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme.

A member may also appeal to the IEP against a decision by the committee on standards.

Additional resources

• Privileges committee report into Boris Johnson: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/40412/documents/197897/default/
• Standards committee report into Owen Paterson: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/7644/documents/79907/default/