Margaret Ferrier should be suspended for 30 days for Covid breach, says MPs’ watchdog

An MP who broke Covid rules in the early stages of the pandemic is facing a 30-day suspension from the House of Commons, raising the prospect of a byelection in her Glasgow seat.

Margaret Ferrier, the MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, was found by the standards watchdog to have damaged the reputation of parliament and put the public at risk when she travelled by train after testing positive.

If the recommended 30-day punishment is agreed by a vote in the Commons it would automatically trigger a recall petition, opening up the possibility of byelection in a seat Labour last won in 2017.

The length of suspension could also raise concerns among supporters of Boris Johnson, who is under investigation by the privileges committee for misleading parliament over the Partygate scandal. However, there is no known precedent in his case.

Ferrier won a majority of 5,230 at the last general election when she stood for the Scottish National party, with Labour finishing second. She lost the SNP whip and has since pleaded guilty to breaching Covid rules, and was sentenced to carry out 270 hours of community service.

A byelection would be the first big electoral test of the new Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf’s tenure as SNP leader, and an opportunity for Labour to show it is resurgent in Scotland after virtual electoral wipeout left it with just one MP.

One Scottish Labour insider said the party was actively seeking a candidate and that, while the SNP was “well dug in” to the constituency, the seat should be “eminently winnable”.

In September 2020 Ferrier developed symptoms and took a Covid test, but the next day attended church and had lunch with a family member.

Two days later, while awaiting the results of a Covid test, she travelled by train to London, took part in a Commons debate and ate in the members’ tearoom in parliament. She then travelled home to Glasgow by train the next morning, a journey that takes up to five hours, despite being told she had tested positive.

The parliamentary commissioner for standards, Daniel Greenberg, said Ferrier had breached the code of conduct for MPs “by placing her own personal interest of not wishing to self-isolate immediately or in London over the public interest of avoiding possible risk of harm to health and life”.

She also breached the code because “her actions commencing from when she first took a Covid-19 test to when she finally begins self-isolation have caused significant damage to the reputation and integrity of the House of Commons as a whole, and of its members generally”.