The House of Lords standards watchdog has dismissed a complaint against the former Labour cabinet minister Peter Hain for using parliamentary privilege to name the Topshop tycoon Sir Philip Green as the businessman at the centre of harassment allegations.
Lord Hain called the complaint “a malevolent ruse” and said the claim against him was without basis. Lucy Scott-Moncrieff, the House of Lords commissioner for standards, accepted that Hain had decided to take the action on moral grounds, without close examination of the legal circumstances.
Green was named in a dramatic intervention by Hain, after days of speculation over a mystery businessman described by the Daily Telegraph as the subject of multiple sexual harassment and bullying allegations. Green has denied any unlawful behaviour.
