SO FORMER foreign secretaries Jack Straw and Malcolm Rifkind have been judged not to have breached parliamentary standards.

The sting organised by Channel 4’s Dispatches and the Telegraph involved a fictitious company sounding out the pair’s willingness to take cash in return for access to powerful figures who could bend or change regulations to the company’s benefit.

Since the company never existed and the favours requested were never carried out, Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Hudson is clearly correct in stating that no rules were broken — “since at no point was either member explicitly asked to lobby and at no point did they offer to do so.”