{"id":713057,"date":"2026-07-27T05:29:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T05:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/713057\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T05:29:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T05:29:12","slug":"labour-accuses-farage-of-new-rule-breach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/713057\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour accuses Farage of new rule breach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this month, he found that Dr Peter Prinsley, a Labour MP, had inadvertently breached the rule by discussing a standards investigation with a BBC journalist.<\/p>\n

The commissioner said the MP had breached paragraph 13 of the code of conduct by correcting the journalist who had asked a question about an ongoing investigation based on incorrect information.<\/p>\n

The breach was deemed to be \u201cinadvertent\u201d because Dr Prinsley had been caught unawares by the question and had no intention of influencing the investigation.<\/p>\n

\u2018Talked about it in pre-scripted speech\u2019<\/p>\n

A Labour source said: \u201cNigel Farage\u2019s disclosure of the widening of the investigation cannot be said to be inadvertent.<\/p>\n

\u201cFarage talked about it in a pre-scripted speech, and more details appear to have been subsequently briefed to The Guardian by people with knowledge of the situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The source added that, were Mr Farage to be re-elected<\/a> on Aug 13, \u201cthe commissioner will also have to investigate whether he broke the code of conduct by disclosing information about the investigation without authorisation\u201d.<\/p>\n

A senior Whitehall source said they believed the Reform leader had committed a \u201ctechnical breach\u201d, which could lengthen any penalty he is given were the original inquiry into undeclared donations to find against him.<\/p>\n

Mr Farage faces potential sanctions ranging from a formal apology to a parliamentary suspension. A suspension of 10 or more days would allow his constituents to trigger a recall petition forcing a second by-election in Clacton<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The inquiry is not expected to conclude until September at the earliest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this month, he found that Dr Peter Prinsley, a Labour MP, had inadvertently breached the rule by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":713058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,673,2053,50,633,229,70,5438,56,225,54,55],"class_list":["post-713057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-house-of-commons","tag-labour-party","tag-news","tag-nigel-farage","tag-politics","tag-reform-uk","tag-standard","tag-uk","tag-uk-news","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}