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- Conservative MP Karl McCartney failed to properly declare his links to Moonlighting Systems.
- A Parliamentary watchdog has found McCartney breached transparency rules three times.
- The finding comes following an investigation by Insider into McCartney's declared interests.
A Conservative MP breached the rules of the House of Commons three times in failing to properly declare his links to a family firm, Moonlighting Systems, Parliament's sleaze watchdog found.
Karl McCartney's failure to properly declare his interests were first uncovered in an investigation by Insider, which led to the probe by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Kathryn Stone.
Stone opened her investigation following a letter from Anneliese Dodds MP, the Labour Party Chair.
Stone found McCartney, the MP for Lincoln from 2010 to 2017, and again since 2019, breached the rules in three ways:
- McCartney described his shareholding and role as being with "ML Systems", not Moonlighting Systems. The use of a shortened version of the company's name was a breach of the rules.
- McCartney said he was a director at the firm, despite being registered at Companies House as a company secretary, and not as a director.
- McCartney used the shortened version of the company's name to register a payment of £3,700 for work he carried out prior to his election in 2019.
McCartney's description of having links to ML Systems was especially confusing given there was a separate company registered at Companies House as ML Systems, to which he has no link.
ML Systems ceased trading in 2015, and was previously known as Rugs R Us.
In the wake of the probe, McCartney apologized for "two specific breaches," seemingly not acknowledging that there were three. McCartney did not respond to a request for comment by Insider.
The Commissioner decided that McCartney's breaches were minor and so could be addressed by making a corrected entry in the Register of Members Interests, placed in bold.
Separately to McCartney's failures to declare his interests, Insider has also reported on how McCartney handed more than £30,000 of taxpayers' money to a campaign donor.
He also abbreviated the company's name, Anagallis Communications, in expenses claims for £9,600 of work done by the firm, to just "A". This expenditure of public money was not part of the Commissioner's investigation.
Correspondence between McCartney and Stone released as part of the Commissioner's report shows the dismissive nature McCartney took towards Insider's reporting of his failures to adequately declare his interests.
McCartney described Insider's original report as a "news story" with inverted commas around the word "news," and appeared to suggest partisan motivation by calling Insider "media associated with the Chairman of the Labour Party".
Insider is not affiliated with any political party. Insider approached Labour with the story, not the reverse.
McCartney told Stone that "as with everything there is a level of individual interpretation and how pedantic one might wish to be".
He also said he wished to update his entry to "remove the likelihood of any possible further pernicious mischief-making that the Labour Party took 11 years to bring to your attention in this instance".