COMPLAINT AGAINST MR GREGORY CAMPBELL

Thank you for sharing with me the letter you have received from Mr Campbell expressing concern about 2 points surrounding my report to the Committee about this complaint. I think that both matters reflect a degree of misunderstanding and I welcome this opportunity to clarify the position.

First, Mr Campbell expresses concern that at one point my office rang the DUP Whips Office to ask Mr Campbell to make contact with us. Although Mr Campbell's letters to me included his home address, he had not asked me to communicate with him only through that address, and in fact my letters had been addressed to him at the House of Commons. When, at one point, I needed to check the progress of a reply expected from Mr Campbell to a letter from me, I asked my PA to check the position with Mr Campbell's office. She rang Mr Campbell's office number at the House, which was diverted to the DUP Whips, something of which she could not have been aware. I can only express regret for any difficulty her entirely inadvertent contact with the staff of his party's Whips office may have caused Mr Campbell.

On the second matter, the availability of the 'rectification procedure' is mentioned in paragraph 13 and the Annex to Procedural Note 3, a copy of which I sent Mr Campbell with my initial letter to him of 18 April about the complaint. Since our correspondence never got beyond the facts surrounding the complaint, there was never again an occasion for me specifically to draw this possibility to Mr Campbell's attention.

I am only sorry in retrospect that Mr Campbell did not take up the offer of a conversation with me about the complaint, which I first tendered in my letter of 18 April. Had that happened, I am sure that these misunderstandings could easily have been avoided.