Geoff Hoon anger over Standards Committee rebuke
It's not the way any senior politician wants to see their parliamentary career end. But the frayed reputation of the former Ashfield MP and Cabinet Minister Geoff Hoon has been well and truly trampled on by a powerful committee of MPs.
He's held some of the most powerful roles in government - in the Foreign Office as Europe Minister, Secretary of State in the Ministry of Defence and the Department for Transport . Now Geoff Hoon has been judged to have brought Parliament into disrepute and told to apologise to MPs.
To add to his dishonour, the Committee on Standards and Privileges has ordered him to hand back his personal security pass that allows former MPs access to parliament. In effect, he is banned from the Palace of Westminster for five years.
The Committee's Commissioner began an investigation into Mr Hoon's conduct last March, just weeks before Gordon Brown would call the General Election.
The former Defence Secretary had been the victim of an undercover TV sting by the Channel Four programme, Dispatches. He had been invited to a swish central London location to talk about career options once he stood down as a MP after the election.
He thought he was attending a potential job interview, and admits he "overstated or exaggerated" how he would translate his political contacts and international knowledge to a future employee. The would-be international head hunter was fictitious.
He was secretly filmed saying he wanted "something that, bluntly makes money"... £3,000 a day was his suggested rate.
The former Defence Secretary also told the undercover reporter he had met officials working on the government's Defence Review and offered to brief. The Committee's Commissioner - who carried out the investigation - highlighted this in particular as breaching the parliamentary code of conduct.
When I spoke to Geoff Hoon, he was deeply upset by this:
"I categorically deny that I would ever divulge confidential Ministry of Defence information. I'm very, very shocked by the Commissioner's findings. I really feel there was no opportunity for me to get a fair hearing. It's as though the Commissioner had already made up his mind. I am very disappointed."And in a letter he sent to the Commissioner a few weeks ago, he added:" The Commissioner's interpretation is not consistent with the agreed facts. There were no briefings by officials about the Defence Review and in those circumstances, I would not have suggested that there were."
Yet the committee's report said: "In our view, Mr Hoon was giving a clear impression that he was offering to brief clients about the strategic defence review on the basis of a confidential briefing he had received from MoD officials."
"Whether Mr Hoon intended to give that impression, only he can say," the report added.
"But looking at the exchanges between Mr Hoon and the interviewer, we find it difficult to accept that he did not know that he was giving that impression."Reputations in politics can be very fragile. Mr Hoon told me he accepts that he now faces an "uphill task" to repair his name... despite a generation spent in public service.
Hello. My name is John Hess. I'm the BBC's Political Editor for the East Midlands and this blog will offer my musings on the political scene from Westminster to closer to home. 
