The Privileges Committee has named a series of Tory MPs and lords - Nadine Dorries, Lord Goldsmith, Mark Jenkinson, Michael Fabricant, Brendan Clarke-Smith, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Andrea Jenkyns, Priti Patel, Lord Cruddas and Lord Greenhalgh - as engaging in a campaign to undermine its inquiry into whether Boris Johnson lied to parliament. It recommends that MPs vote to give it the powers, currently enjoyed by its twin, the Standards Committee, to punish such MPs should they transgress in the future. But that isn't the end of it. Any motion to give the committee those powers is very likely to be amended, to insist that Dorries, Patel, Rees-Mogg and the rest apologise to MPs in formal commons statements. Were they to refuse, they would at that point be in contempt of the Commons and would presumably be suspended.