Scottish MP Margaret Ferrier should be suspended from Parliament for 30 days for breaking COVID-19 rules, the House of Commons standards watchdog said on Thursday.
The Committee on Standards found that the 62-year-old MP has “acted selfishly in her personal interest and in defiance of the public interest” and “caused significant damage to the reputation” of Parliament by failing to isolate after contracting COVID-19 in 2020.
The Rutherglen and Hamilton West MP has previously been sentenced to 270 hours of community service for the breach. If MPs approve her suspension, it may trigger a by-election for her seat.
On Sept. 26, 2020, Ferrier, then a Scottish National Party (SNP) MP, took a COVID-19 test after having developed symptoms.
Guidance at the time said those who developed COVID-19-like symptoms or tested positive for the disease should self-isolate for 10 days, but Ferrier went to a church the next day and went out for lunch with a family member.
Ferrier’s prosecutor previously alleged that she had also visited a beauty salon and a gift shop after booking the tests.
On Sept. 28, 2020, which was a Monday, Ferrier took a taxi and a train to London, spoke in the House of Commons about COVID-19 financial support for furloughed workers, and ate in the Members’ Tearoom, despite the parliamentary guidance that said MPs who had COVID-19 symptoms or were waiting for test results should stay away from the House.
After receiving a positive test result that evening, Ferrier told the SNP’s chief whip that she would be returning to Scotland the next day because a family member was unwell.
Ferrier took a train back to Scotland on the morning of Sept. 29, 2020. She ignored four calls from the NHS Scotland Test and Protect team during the journey and answered a call upon arriving home.
According to the Committee on Standards, Ferrier told Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Daniel Greenberg that she didn’t think the train was a “suitable and secure environment to be answering a series of sensitive, confidential questions.”
On Sept. 30, she contacted the parliamentary test and trace team and the SNP chief whip about her positive test.
‘Shock and Anxiety’
Her party whip has since been withdrawn. Former SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has pressured Ferrier to resign as an MP, but she has resisted the pressure and is sitting as an independent.In her written evidence submitted to the committee, Ferrier said she accepted that she had caused significant damage to the reputation of the House, but denied having put her own interests above that of the public.
“My decision to make the journey home once I had discovered I had tested positive for COVID-19 was made whilst in a state of shock and anxiety, even panic,” she wrote.
“I did not at any time believe that I was acting in my own self-interest but believed I was taking the safest step in the unfortunate set of circumstances that I had myself created when I made the decision to travel to London, a poor decision which I now bitterly regret,” she wrote.
But the committee concluded that she should have realised that there was a conflict between her personal interest and the public interest.
Recommending Ferrier’s suspension, the commissioner said her rule-breaching “was not a single misjudgment, but a series of deliberate actions over several days.”
‘Reckless’
Ferrier now faces losing her seat in a by-election if the proposed suspension is backed by MPs, as anything longer than a 10-sitting day punishment can trigger a recall petition. If 10 percent of her constituents back it, a by-election will be called.The minutes of the Ferrier decision show Tory MPs Alberto Costa, Sir Bernard Jenkin, Sir Charles Walker, and SNP MP Allan Dorans tried to reduce her recommended sentence to 9 sitting days.
All four men also sit on the cross-party Privileges Committee, which is considering whether former Prime Minister Boris Johnson committed contempt of Parliament by misleading MPs about rule-breaching parties during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
Labour’s shadow Scottish secretary Ian Murray said there should be a by-election in the seat.
“Margaret Ferrier’s reckless actions put people at risk and rode roughshod over the rules everyone else followed,” he said.
“It is right that Parliament has thrown the book at her for this unacceptable behaviour.
“There are still serious questions for the SNP to answer on what they knew and what they did at the time.
“Ferrier should do the right thing and stand down as an MP.
“Even Nicola Sturgeon called for her to resign—now (Scottish First Minister) Humza Yousaf must do the same.
“If Margaret Ferrier doesn’t resign, the people of Rutherglen and Hamilton West can exercise their right to boot her from office.
“Her constituents deserve better and that means a by-election,” he said.
