A Conservative peer breached parliament’s code of conduct when he and five MPs tried to get senior judges to intervene in a hearing on whether references to support the former MP Charlie Elphicke at his sentencing for sexual assault could be made public. Lord Freud failed to meet the standards of conduct expected of individual members and has agreed make a personal statement to the House of Lords, according to the commissioner for standards. Freud agreed to apologise after being found to have breached the code of conduct by seeking to interfere in a legal decision.
An investigation was launched when a member of public complained after reading a Guardian report that the head of the judiciary had admonished Freud and five MPs for seeking to influence a judge overseeing a hearing about the release of the references. Freud and the MPs – Sir Roger Gale, Adam Holloway, Bob Stewart, Theresa Villiers and Elphicke’s estranged wife Natalie – have also been referred separately to the standards commissioner by the Labour MP Helen Hayes. The outcome of that complaint is yet to be known. It had not been Freud’s idea to contact the judges and he had not realised that the letters were being sent on House of Commons headed paper, according to Tuesday’s report into his conduct. The peer had also “genuinely lacked knowledge of the nature of the judicial hierarchy” and the letters had been drafted by others. Freud told the commissioner, who interviewed him last month, that with hindsight “I think I and indeed the MPs do not understand the relationship between junior and senior judges.” He and the commissioner discussed the nature of the hierarchy of the court system that a more senior court can review the decisions of a lower court, but that judges are independent of one another in their decision-making rather than in what could be described as a line-management relationship. Lord Freud said he had “assumed a hierarchy, which there is but not in that context”. The commissioner rejected the suggestion that the peer and MP’s letters to senior judges had been intended to raise “matters of principle”. Instead, they had been attempts to persuade them to intervene. Freud, Gale, Holloway, Stewart and Theresa Villiers were among several people who had provided character references to support Elphicke at his sentencing in September, when he was jailed for two years after he was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault against two women. The Guardian then lodged a request to gain access to the references provided by the parliamentarians – who were not known at the time – and a date was set for a court hearing. Freud and the MPs subsequently identified themselves as the authors of references. However, they and Natalie Elphicke then wrote to senior judges, copying in the judge who was due to oversee the hearing, expressing concern that “matters of principle” should first be considered by senior members of the judiciary and by parliament. They were rebuked by the office of the lord chief justice for England and Wales, who said told them it was “improper” to seek to influence the decision of a judge who would ultimately rule on the basis of evidence and argument in court. The commissioner for standards interviewed Freud on 6 January and was provided with copies of the letters written to the senior judges, in which the peer and MPs said they had no objections to being identified as the authors of the references but said that the release of letters by other figures would have a “chilling effect”. Elphicke is appealing against his conviction.