Chris Boothman is a long-serving public sector lawyer who was at the Commission for Racial Equality during the investigation into the Stephen Lawrence inquiry.

Now he is head of legal services at the Standards Board for England, the organisation set up to promote ethical behaviour across thousands of public sector authorities and to investigate breaches of its code of conduct. Its highest-profile case came last year, when Westminster councillor Paul Dimoldenberg blew the whistle on Dame Shirley Porter, an act related to the homes-for-votes scandal.

Dimoldenberg claimed a public interest defence, but lost as there were no provisions for this in the board’s code. Boothman helped deliver the victory, although the local government watchdog is facing calls for its abolition following negative publicity relating to this and other cases.

The code has now been changed to allow councillors to leak information to the media if it is deemed to be in the public interest. But as Boothman points out: "As a watchdog, we can’t decide what we investigate. If there’s a breach of the code we have to investigate."