The Commissioner for Standards has written to Parliament’s Standards Committee for the third time asking for authorisation to publish decisions not to investigate complaints.

Currently, when the Commissioner investigates a complaint his case report on the investigation is normally published. But if the Commissioner decides that a complaint does not warrant investigation, he cannot publish his decision to this effect. He can only send the decision to the complainant and the person who was the subject of the complaint.

The aim behind this practice, which was established by the Committee in 2019, was to avoid publicising an allegation if the Commissioner did not intend to investigate it.

In many cases, however, this consideration does not apply because the allegation is already in the public domain. For this reason the Commissioner wrote to the Committee on 15 June and 5 December 2023 asking for authorisation to publish decisions not to investigate complaints.

On 19 September 2024, the Commissioner wrote for the third time to restate his request and point out that it was still pending before the Committee after more than a year.

The Commissioner also said that his inability to publish decisions not to investigate complaints served only to allow others to publish selective, inaccurate or downright misleading accounts of those decisions, as happened recently in connection with complaint 179. Furthermore, unnecessary secrecy went against the principle of transparency and risked undermining public confidence in the way the Standards in Public Life Act was being put into effect.

The Commissioner therefore asked the Committee to decide on his request as soon as possible in the interests of good governance.

The Commissioner’s letter is available from here.