Point of Order: Rectification Procedure

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call Charlie Maynard on a point of order in connection with the code of conduct, to rectify a failure to declare.

[Charlie Maynard (Witney) (LD)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In response to a recommendation by the Committee on Standards, I would like to apologise to the House for failing to register several interests within the 28-day period set by the House. They included my receipt of pro bono legal advice to support my intervention, at the High Court and subsequently at the Court of Appeal, in the sanctions hearing of Thames Water Utilities Ltd’s restructuring plan. Nor did I appreciate that I should have registered an informal arrangement with a family member to use her London flat without charge while I was staying in Westminster. I also owned and subsequently sold shares in a Vietnamese company that exceeded the threshold for registration. Finally, I failed to update my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests when my role as a councillor at West Oxfordshire district council ended.

Those failures were a result of my own errors. I am grateful to the Committee for recognising that I neither gained nor sought to gain any advantage, and that I acted honestly in repeatedly drawing the commissioner’s attention to failings as I identified them. I fully accept that those are breaches of rule 5 of the code of conduct. I apologise to the House and commit to take a more diligent approach to the registration of my interests in future.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the hon. Member for his point of order and for giving notice of it. I remind the House that Members may seek advice on the code of conduct at any time from the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and from the Registrar of Members’ Financial Interests. There will be no further points of order on this issue.