Tory MP Dorrell cleared over financial care home links

Health select committee chairman Stephen Dorrell has been cleared over allegations he should have declared financial links with care home owners.

The Tory MP had sold his London home to friends who own a group of care homes for a reported £70,000 profit, and rented the property back from them on Commons expenses.

At the time, the health select committee had been carrying out an inquiry into social care.

However, parliamentary standards commissioner John Lyon said that Dorrell had not broken any rules.

Lyon wrote in a letter to Labour MP John Mann, who made the complaint, that “the nature of Mr Dorrell’s connection to his friends was not such as to require him to declare it as a personal interest” and that Lyon believed Dorrell’s claim he did not discuss the social care inquiry with his friends.