Tory MPs threaten to defy sleaze verdict
SENIOR Tories are planning an unprecedented bid to save a former Cabinet Minister’s political career by overturning the verdict of Westminster’s anti-sleaze watchdog.
The MPs are threatening to spare Owen Paterson a 30-day suspension from Parliament by voting down a damning report that found him guilty of breaking lobbying rules.
The Commons Standards Committee said last week that Mr Paterson had committed an ‘egregious case of paid advocacy’ on behalf of two companies – clinical diagnostics firm Randox and meat processor Lynn’s Country Foods. He was earning more than £100,000 a year from the firms and repeatedly lobbied Ministers and officials on their behalf.
The former Environment Secretary defiantly protested his innocence, labelling the inquiry ‘biased’ and ‘not fair’, and said he had been raising serious issues about food contamination. He argued that none of his 17 witnesses was interviewed by the watchdog and said the two-year investigation was also ‘a major contributory factor’ in his wife Rose’s suicide last year.
The vote by MPs on the report is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, and a 30-day suspension would allow his constituents to petition for a by-election. The Mail on Sunday understands that Tory whips are working this weekend to decide if they have enough support to reject the committee’s ruling entirely or reduce the punishment Mr Paterson faces.
In The Mail on Sunday today, former Brexit Secretary David Davis urges MPs not to endorse the ‘wrong-headed report’ and demands an overhaul of how MPs are policed, claiming the current system has seen ‘innocent people have their reputations trashed, and comparative villains get away scot-free’.
But the threat to overturn the verdict was last night branded an outrage worthy of the MPs’ expenses scandal.
Labour committee chairman Chris Bryant said it would be the first time ‘in our history’ that such an action had been taken.
It is also understood that the report was published only after Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle rejected a private appeal from senior Tories to intervene.