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Standards and Privileges

One of the issues that came up during the investigation, which I had not known before, was that there was a power for the hon. Gentleman to ask that the commissioner should not investigate alone before the matter went to the Committee, and that an investigatory panel comprising the commissioner, a lawyer and a senior Member of the House should do the job, possibly to give a bit more authority to the investigation. Will the hon. Gentleman tell us whether he considered using that process and, if he did, why he rejected it? It seems to me that it would have been a worthwhile initiative for him to take, because it would have brought some independence from this building to the investigation.