Bungling bid to save Tory MP backfires for Johnson’s Government

IT is hard not to feel deep sympathy for MP Owen Paterson, who lost his wife to suicide earlier this year – brought on, he says, by an investigation into his conduct alleging he broke parliamentary rules on paid lobbying.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards found that Mr Paterson had breached guidelines and should be suspended from the House of Commons for 30 days.

The suspension could have led to him facing a recall petition and a byelection. In short, it could have cost him his North Shropshire seat. His dramatic resignation yesterday means that won’t now happen because he is going anyway, forced out – it seems – by a bungling government which, having organised a sleazy vote to save him, then lost its nerve and backtracked on its decision, leaving the former Environment Secretary high and dry.

It has not been a good couple of days for well-ordered government, that’s for sure. There is clearly a case for a close look at the way MPs are dealt with, when they transgress. The issue of political lobbying, where those with access to ministers and law-makers are paid by businesses to plead their case, needs to be properly policed. But, equally, MPs need to be able to defend themselves.

In Mr Paterson’s case, the process appears to have suffered flaws, and he vehemently denied any wrongdoing. But for the Conservative party to have ordered its MPs to vote for a review of the system just at the moment Mr Paterson was facing suspension, so sparing him that punishment, was wrong from the start. The fact it took a minor rebellion by some Tory MPs, narrowing the vote in the Government’s favour to make Ministers realise their mistake and make a U-turn, compounds the error.

It left Mr Paterson with little option but to fall on his sword, saying he would be making a new life “outside the cruel world of politics”.

Mr Paterson is well known to many in the rural Westcountry for his no-nonsense approach, as Environment Secretary, to the problem of bovine TB in cattle. He pressed ahead with the controversial badger cull when he was Secretary of State from 2012 to 2014.

Many farmers credit him with helping to reduce the incidence of disease and praised him for taking a close interest in the farming industry – not something that could be said of every Environment Secretary who came before him.

The death of his wife, Rose, who hanged herself in woodland close to the family home in June, shocked all those who knew the couple. Mr Paterson said later that the investigation into his lobbying, which earned him around £100,000 a year and was found to be in breach of the rules, “undoubtedly played a major role” in his wife’s suicide.

“She became convinced that the investigation would destroy my reputation and force me to resign my North Shropshire seat that I have now served for 24 years,” he said.

He may yet have a chance to restore that reputation from outside the Commons. The Conservatives could have a more difficult job in justifying their handling of this issue.