WEST Devon and Torridge MP Geoffrey Cox has had to apologise to the Commons for failing to declare more than £400,000 of outside earnings — but he will face no further punishment.

Parliament's Standards Committee found that Mr Cox had committed a ’serious’ breach of rules, though it stated he had not ’intended to hide’ the money earned for hundreds of hours of legal work.

Mr Cox referred himself to the Parliamentary Commissioner and stepped down from his position in the Commons Standards Committee last October after it emerged he had repeatedly missed the 28-day deadline to declare his earnings.

According to the latest register of members’ financial interests, Mr Cox received £325,000 on June 15 and 16 this year for 500 hours of work carried out between June 2014 and March 2015. Commons rules state that external income needs to be registered within 28 days, but the sum was not declared to the authorities until September 30.

Speaking in the Commons, Mr Cox said: ’The House has a right to expect its members, and particularly those on the Standards Committee as I was, that they will uphold its rules to the fullest extent. For this reason I have stepped down from the Standards Committee and I hope the House will accept my sincere and full-hearted apology for my failure to observe this important rule.’

Standards watchdog Kathryn Hudson wrote in her report on the matter: ’He told me, and I can only agree, that he "failed to give this matter the due thought and priority it required".’