The former Tory MP failed to register a £4.5 million loan from a major political donor for three years – and refused to apologise after Parliament’s Standards watchdog
A former Tory MP failed to register a £4.5 million loan from a major political donor for three years – and refused to apologise after Parliament’s Standards watchdog ruled he’d broken the rules.
Andrew Bridgen took the interest-free loan from Jeremy Hosking, who has bankrolled Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party which Mr Bridgen later joined, in 2000 to pay for a legal case relating to his family.
Despite the loan being for non-political purposes, Daniel Greenberg, the Standards Commissioner ruled he should have declared it within 28 days. In fact, he failed to declare it until 2023, just months before he was booted out of office.
The Standards Commissioner said the funding was registerable as an interest from October 12 2020, and “the first payment was therefore registered 1,135 days late”.
In his report, Mr Greenberg said it had been an “inadvertent” breach of the rules, offering Mr Bridgen the opportunity to apologise and avoid the matter being passed to the Standards Committee – a group of MPs who usually determines punishment for rule-breaking.
But Mr Bridgen refused, saying he was “not willing to apologise for something when personally I do not believe I breached any rule”.
The Standards Committee said: “We hope that Mr Bridgen will now behave honourably and acknowledge that he was wrong, even if honestly wrong, to believe that the £4.47 million provided to him by Mr Hosking was not a registrable interest.” They added: “We agree with the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards that he should have apologised to the House.
“The purpose for which the money was provided was private and personal; Mr Bridgen’s relationship with a political donor none the less raised sufficient reason to make such donations a matter for registration.”
The probe into the former MP for North West Leicestershire began in 2024 – before voters turfed him out of office at the General Election.
The Committee said in its report today: “Although the sum of money involved is substantial, this breach of the rules was inadvertent. Even if the Committee wished to impose some sanction on Mr Bridgen, there is no practical sanction now at its disposal.”
