Did the privileges committee really need to bother with a report scolding a number of Boris Johnson’s supporters for what it has called a ‘co-ordinated campaign of interference’ in its work?

Today it has published its verdict on seven MPs and one peer, Lord Goldsmith. This special report finds ‘disturbing’ examples of behaviour designed to pressure, intimidate and undermine the committee. None of these examples took place within the Commons, as the Speaker had made a ruling against abuse of the committee. Instead, the report says, there was a ‘campaign waged outside parliament’ which ‘used newspapers and radio and there was extensive use of social media’.

Discipline isn’t about ignoring small patterns and only responding when something dreadful happens

This behaviour did not affect the outcome of the committee’s inquiry, but ‘it had a significant personal impact on individual members and raised significant security concerns’. Some of the most important examples, in the committee’s view, include Nadine Dorries arguing on TalkTV that the committee was always going to find Johnson guilty and that the Conservative members of the committee might find their careers would benefit from punishing Johnson.

Another example was Lord Goldsmith retweeting a description of the inquiry as a ‘kangaroo court’ and saying himself that ‘there was only ever going to be one outcome and the evidence was totally irrelevant to it’. Michael Fabricant tweeted that historians would examine ‘the question of calibre, malice and prejudice’. The list goes on, as have many of those named in it: they have variously been arguing that this report undermines the free speech of members and that it contains inaccuracies.

The free speech argument is probably the more compelling in that it makes the committee seem thin-skinned and unable to take criticism or feedback. But the reason that it was important to pursue this has little to do with the feelings of individual members – even though the committee chose to emphasise this aspect.

This report is about contempt of parliament and attempts to undermine or render pointless its processes. Many of those tweets and broadcast comments were designed not to highlight errors or process but to impugn the integrity of individual members and the inquiry itself.

The narrow aim of those making the comments was to muddy the waters around any judgement of Johnson to the extent that, whatever the punishment, he would still have more of his reputation intact than he might deserve. He’s not an MP any more, and his punishment was to be stripped of the right to a former members’ pass. But the wider effect of the campaign was to make parliament look smaller and lacking in integrity.

Parliament is, or should be, important and taken seriously. If that sentence sounds pompous it is only because attempts to undermine it have succeeded. Even our instinctive reaction to this committee report, that the MPs are being too prissy, shows we don’t really take them seriously any more.

Often parliament now offers such a low grade interpretation of scrutiny and behaviour that it’s a real effort to take it seriously. The quality of many MPs does make it easier for unparliamentary types like Johnson to justify riding roughshod over process repeatedly when he was prime minister. The attitude of some of his key aides like Dominic Cummings, which was that most MPs were pretty stupid and useless, does have a fair few examples to back that up. But giving into that narrative merely empowers a few powerful (and not demonstrably wiser) people to do questionable things: a strong and respected parliament is able to stop them or at least point out their mistakes.

Publishing a special report on the behaviour of a handful of MPs isn’t going to turn around attitudes or standards. But then again, maintaining standards isn’t just about drawing boundaries around the big breaches of rules, but also the small infringements. We know from the way we bring children up that discipline isn’t about ignoring small patterns and only responding when something dreadful happens. You can’t impugn parliamentary processes that you yourself voted for without being checked – and neither should parliament let itself become ridiculous.