PRIME MINISTER Rishi Sunak broke the MPs’ code of conduct by publicly confirming details about a parliamentary standards watchdog probe.

No 10 confirmed details about the investigation into his failure to correctly declare his wife Akshata Murty’s financial interest in a childminding company earlier this year.

The Commons Standards Committee found this constituted a “minor and inadvertent” breach of rule 13 of the MPs’ code of conduct — which forbids parliamentarians from disclosing details of “any investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards except when required by law to do so, or authorised by the Commissioner.”

Standards Commissioner Daniel Greenberg said: “While it was open to the media to speculate, when Mr Sunak’s spokesman confirmed to the media that the inquiry related to Mr Sunak’s ‘links to a childcare firm in which his wife is an investor’ he disclosed details about my inquiry.”

The Standards Committee stopped short of recommending any sanction against the Prime Minister, given the nature of the rule breach.