How Boris Johnson is exposed by Owen Paterson and Tory sleaze – Tom Richmond

Paterson, believe it or not, was among the 250 MPs who successfully vetoed a damning report into his “egregious” lobbying on behalf of two firms who paid him over £100,000 a year – and then said that he would not alter his behaviour. “No, I wouldn’t hesitate tomorrow. Absolutely,” he told Sky News.

Owen Paterson had to quit; he brought democracy into disrepute – The Yorkshire Post says

Yet, while credit does go to MPs like Thirsk and Malton’s Kevin Hollinrake who did stand up to Tory whips and say “I think it is wrong to change the process as it is happening”, Wednesday’s shameful antics did briefly deny the voters of North Shropshire the chance to decide if Paterson, 65, should still represent them.

Tory sleaze to now haunt Boris Johnson – Bill Carmichael

And while there will now be a by-election after Paterson’s own arrogance inflamed public and political opinion to such an extent that he had to resign, it does not excuse Tory whips for trying to ride roughshod over Parliament’s independence to save a MP whose misconduct – regardless of the tragic loss of his wife Rose last year – was indefensible.

This is what the Committee on Standards concluded: “No previous case of paid advocacy has seen so many breaches or such a clear pattern of behaviour in failing to separate private and public interests.”

This cross-party committee, whose integrity was also disgracefully called 
into question, went further: “Mr Paterson’s financial remuneration from Randox and Lynn’s amounted to nearly three times his annual parliamentary salary.”

And while it noted the mitigating personal factors, it said Paterson’s actions showed “a failure to uphold the Seven Principles of Public Life” and he had made “serious, personal, and unsubstantiated allegations against the integrity” of Kathryn Stone, the Standards Commissioner, and her team.

In my view, the recommendation that Paterson be suspended from the Commons for 30 days – potentially forcing a by-election under “recall” laws – was lenient.

But what I want to know is why Boris Johnson, Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg and Tory chief whip Mark Spencer did not foresee the consequences when they decided to force a vote in order to save a discredited colleague. Whoever advised them deserves the sack.

And, given how Johnson went out of his way at PMQs to defend the calling of the vote, ostensibly so MPs had greater rights of appeal against any sanctions levelled by the Committee on Standards, who does he intend to blame for a scandal that is just the latest example of this Government’s contempt for Parliament?

For, without his human shield, Owen Paterson, the Prime Minister is now exposed and he will be failing Parliament, his party and the electorate if he does not offer a full chronology of events that also outlines his role in a scandal that has been rightly called out – as corruption. Nothing less deserves to suffice if the PM is to be accountable to Parliament and not vice-versa.

THIS has been a week where the country has been crying out for strong moral leadership to match the example of the Queen and Sir David Attenborough’s words of the wisdom to the COP26 climate change summit.

After all, the Owen Paterson affair coincided with two Metropolitan Police officers pleading guilty to sharing photos of the bodies of two murdered sisters on WhatsApp and Yorkshire County Cricket Club’s racism scandal.

I could go on. Yet what was the Archbishop of Canterbury – the nation’s supposed moral guardian – counselling amid all this? He was saying that leaders who don’t take climate change seriously would be responsible for “a genocide on an infinitely greater scale” than the Holocaust.

Though the Most Rev Justin Welby quickly apologised, and conceded that it’s “never right” to make comparisons with the Nazis, he did make a conscious decision to use such words and is fortunate that other events have negated a wider debate about whether he’s still fit to lead the Church – or not.

PARLIAMENTARY questions on COP26 marked the 12th occasion that Boris Johnson has eulogised about Northern Powerhouse Rail without offering any detail.

Now Transport Minister Andrew Stephenson says the much-delayed Integrated Rail Plan, which will decide on this and the fate of the eastern leg of HS2, is coming “very soon” – an upgrade on its previous status.

What are the odds that it will be published next week during the three days when the House of Commons is, bizarrely, not sitting just a fortnight after its work was halted for over three weeks to accommodate the party conferences?

AN informative text from a ministerial aide travelling by train to COP26 after bad weather paralysed services on the West Coast Main Line – despite vast sums being spent on overhauling its infrastructure. “Need to build HS2!” Quite right. And to Yorkshire as well.

GEORGE Eustice – one of the Cabinet’s most under-performing ministers (and there’s no shortage of candidates) – was interviewed from London on day two of COP26.

Either he’d been let down by public transport – or Eustice’s presence had been deemed unnecessary by organisers. All the more puzzling because he’s only the Environment Secretary.

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