Parliament has ordered Boris Johnson to apologise after he failed to declare almost £53,000 in earnings from books and his weekly Daily Telegraph column.
The former foreign secretary was found to have failed to register payments in time nine times over the past year, with delays of up to 11 weeks.
Kathryn Stone, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, wrote the findings in a report.
“The nine late registrations made by the Member at the time I began my inquiry had a total value of £52,722.80 which represents almost seventy per cent of a Member’s salary. The number of late registrations suggested a lack of attention to the House’s requirements, rather than inadvertent error. In light of that, this matter could not be concluded by way of the rectification procedure,” she wrote.
“For this reason, I am submitting this Memorandum to the Committee on Standards for consideration,” the report added.
“However, these payments cannot have been entirely unexpected and, given that the house has made explicit that it expects members to fulfil their responsibilities conscientiously, it would have been prudent for Mr Johnson to have had an administrative system in place to ensure his compliance with those rules. It appears that he did not arrange that until after I had begun my inquiry.”
For his weekly column in the Daily Telegraph, Johnson is paid £22,916 a month for the four articles. He began the contract just two days after quitting as foreign secretary earlier this year.
The MP has also written 11 books, for which he receives thousands of pounds worth of royalties every month.