Master and servant: Owen Paterson with his former boss, Peter Fitzgerald of Randox. Funny that… wasn’t Paterson supposed to be working for the people of North Shropshire?
The hypocrisy is strong in this one.
Owen Paterson, the former Conservative MP, had to resign after being found to have broken lobbying rules while working for two firms as a paid consultant alongside his Parliamentary duties.
Now this Brexiteer is taking the government to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) – despite having once campaigned to break away from that organisation.
He says the investigation was unfair because it did not hear from witnesses and met in secret, and damaged his good reputation.
The former MP for North Shropshire also says he was only given 15 minutes to address Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Stone, was not permitted to be represented by a lawyer and had no right to appeal.
His decision to take the government to an organisation from which he wanted the UK to break away has been met with some hilarity:
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Master and servant: Owen Paterson with his former boss, Peter Fitzgerald of Randox. They parted company shortly after Paterson stopped being an MP, which suggests that – rather than working for the people of North Shropshire – Paterson was really Randox’s inside man in Parliament.
Here’s an example of Tory greed at its worst.
Last year, after Owen Paterson ended up resigning as an MP because he had been found to have lobbied hard for at least one of several other employers, Boris Johnson promised curbs on the kind of secondary employment MPs could take.
But that was last year.
It seems he thinks we’ve all forgotten and he can signal the all-clear for his MP buddies (not all of them Tories!) to “Carry On Lobbying”.
Here are the details from the BBC News website:
Limiting the amount of time MPs spend on second jobs would be “impractical”, the government has said.
Boris Johnson called for a review of MPs’ outside work last year after a number of high-profile controversies.
At the time, the prime minister backed proposals to place “reasonable limits” on hours spent on other jobs.
MPs later backed government plans to prevent them taking on certain jobs, with No 10 saying any outside role, paid or unpaid, should be “within reasonable limits” and not stop MPs fully serving their constituents.
A definition of what that meant was not given, but International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan suggested 15 hours a week as a reasonable limit.
But Cabinet Office Minister Steve Barclay has now said the measure would not work and also cast doubt on a proposed cap on outside earnings.
“The imposition of time limits would not necessarily serve to address recent concerns over paid advocacy and the primary duty of MPs to serve their constituents.”
When it came to a cap on earnings, Mr Barclay also had his doubts, writing that such a rule “could serve to prohibit activities which do not bring undue influence to bear on the political system”, such as writing books.
He said a long-serving MP “could inadvertently reach the ‘ceiling’ through earnings accrued over time”, and he questioned “whether it would be fair to subject that member to a standards investigation”.
He added: “To avoid this issue would require a substantive earning threshold to be set such that it would not serve to prevent MPs from taking on outside work for which they were properly remunerated in line with salaries in that sector.
“The introduction of such an arbitrary cap therefore may not have the intended effect of ensuring that members prioritise their parliamentary duties and the needs of their constituents.”
Why not just combine time limits with a ban on lobbying for firms that employ them, then?
(I’ll tell you why: no firm would then wish to employ them. Randox and Owen Paterson parted company as soon as he left Parliament.)
The u-turn provoked a sharp reaction from the pundits on the BBC’s Politics Live…
Making an announcement in the middle of a war keeps it off the front pages, said Ed Vaizey.
He – a Tory – admitted it should be possible to limit the number of hours an MP works for other employers, and it should be possible to limit earnings.
And Stella Creasy said it isn’t hard to work out what is fair: if someone is a doctor it is fair to expect them to do a bit of practice to keep their skills up. “But you don’t need to practise to make a million pounds sitting in the British Virgin Islands [as former Attorney General Geoffrey Cox did] … it looks bad for all of us.”
She continued: “The public are looking at us with horror. The question isn’t how many hours – it’s ‘where do you find the time?’ There is quite a lot on, right now!”
Even Torygraph columnist Madeline Grant said: “Boris Johnson is very good at promising things in the short term to get out of trouble and then reverse-ferreting.”
She added: “They should have been looking at probity and conflict of interest, which is why the Owen Paterson scandal was so appalling.”
“I think they just bottled it,” said Miatta Fahnbulleh of the New Economics Foundation. “This might come back to bite them because it leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths.
“Being an MP is really hard; it is a full-time, pretty intense, full-on job, and for constituents [the question is] is your attention, is your priority, is your care divided? If you’re earning 200-300 grand in that other job you’d be right to feel that’s more of a priority.”
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Boris Johnson and Owen Paterson: if the prime minister was prepared to twist Parliamentary rules for this corporate shill, then he certainly can’t be trusted to clean up Downing Street.
If you needed proof that Boris Johnson won’t fix the culture of rule-breaking in Downing Street – because he is the problem – it’s in the way he protected Owen Paterson’s persistent lobbying.
Paterson – now the former MP for North Shropshire – was being paid £8,333 per month for 16 hours’ work as a consultant for health firm Randox when he started pestering then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock on the company’s behalf.
His lobbing started in January 2020 – two months before Boris Johnson accepted the seriousness of Covid-19 and locked the UK down.
And he wouldn’t wait for a decision. Here’s the timeline according to Sky News:
WhatsApp messages show Mr Paterson gave Mr Hancock Randox boss Dr Peter Fitzgerald’s contact details on 26 January 2020.
Mr Paterson said he told Mr Fitzgerald to “expect an email” from the health secretary, who contacted the Randox boss that night.
Mr Hancock then told Mr Paterson on 5 February 2020 that Public Health England (PHE) would be in touch with Mr Fitzgerald “directly”.
On 25 February, Mr Paterson again contacted Mr Hancock, saying Randox had not been contacted by the government for 19 days, while its test kits had been shipped to “China, Mexico, Ukraine, Oman, Tunisia and Guatemala”.
He added: “PHE’s attitude looks incomprehensible given current developments” and said there was “absolutely no sense of urgency”.
Forwarding Mr Paterson’s messages on to officials, Mr Hancock [said] he was “very worried about this… If we are treating other companies like this we are failing.”
Randox was awarded its £133 million contract in March 2020. It was a closed process – unadvertised and with no other companies being asked to bid.
In later messages, before a meeting, a senior official in then-health minister Lord Bethell’s office said on 11 May 2020: “Lord Bethell has indicated that he would like a 1:1 with Owen Patterson [sic] beforehand as well (who I understand is a consultant employed by Randox).”
This may correspond with the information we had that, a month after the contract was awarded, Paterson was a party to a call between Randox and James Bethell, then the Tory minister responsible for Covid-19 testing supplies.
We know that there was concern in July 2020 about Randox testing kits.
Randox was hired to supply 2.7 million testing kits – but 750,000 of them were withdrawn after spot checks in July 2020 found that some of the kits, supplied by a Chinese manufacturer but sent out by Randox, were not sterile and could therefore be contaminated.
The failure delayed plans to provide regular testing for English care home residents and staff. We later discovered that Tory government failures to protect care homes resulted in around 30,000 unnecessary deaths.
But in September 2020, Mr Paterson sent a WhatsApp message asking Mr Hancock to “revisit even briefly and privately” the long-term future of Randox’s involvement in testing, as he had visited the firm in Northern Ireland for the first time and was impressed.
He added there was “widespread exasperation that Randox’s achievements have not been promoted”.
Randox’s contract was extended for a further six months in October 2020. Again, the process was closed – unadvertised, with no other companies permitted to bid.
In October 2020, Mr Paterson complained that a story in The Guardian said the government “only gave Randox the testing contract because I’m a paid consultant”.
He asked Mr Hancock: “If it comes up, can you kill this once and for all as I know absolutely nothing about the contact?”
Mr Hancock replied: “Of course.”
Well, hang on a second, there. Paterson contacted Hancock to secure a contract for Randox to supply test kits in January 2020, then followed this up the following month; Randox got its contract in March.
He was involved in some way in at least one meeting between the government and Randox.
And after Randox’s kits were found to be potentially contaminated, Paterson went back to demand that its contract should be “revisited”, and it was renewed very soon afterwards.
And then, in the very month the Randox contract was renewed – at his urging – Paterson secured Hancock’s collusion in misleading the public that he had nothing to do with it!
Here’s the topper, though:
Also revealed was the fact Lord Agnew, who suddenly resigned last month as the minister in charge of tackling COVID fraud, warned Mr Hancock the government was “paying dramatically over the odds” for Randox’s tests.
So not only was Paterson instrumental in securing and renewing the Randox contract but the company received more than the going rate – in public money – for its services.
This Writer doesn’t blame Randox for any of this wrongdoing; it is a commercial firm and was acting in its interests.
But Paterson was clearly breaking Parliamentary rules on lobbying by MPs – which is what the Standards Commissioner found after an investigation.
Now, here’s why Boris Johnson can’t be trusted to end the kind of corruption that led to members of the government in Downing Street holding lockdown-busting parties while the rest of us suffered:
Instead of accepting a ruling against his MP, he tried to change the rules to get rid of the person who made it, and to ensure that corporate sponsorship of Tory MPs would be legalised.
Perhaps Johnson hadn’t seen the WhatsApp messages mentioned above, but he had seen the evidence that had gone before Kathryn Stone, and his first instinct was to use his own powers to make changes that override it.
His reason? We think it’s that Paterson’s penalty was 30 days’ suspension from Parliament, which would have exposed him to a possible recall petition from his constituents, who could then vote him out in a by-election.
Johnson couldn’t bear that – even though he had an 80-seat Parliamentary majority.
So he decided to change the rules – in all our faces – instead.
And now another inquiry has shown that the Downing Street parties were symptomatic of a failure of standards in the government.
Johnson’s first instinct has been to make changes.
Logic – and the precedent created by Paterson – tells us those changes would be to ensure nobody ever again finds out what goes on in Downing Street, or to put that address above the law that affects every other location in the UK.
That is why Johnson is the problem. And that’s why he has to go.
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Owen Paterson with his (former?) boss, Peter Fitzgerald of Randox. It seems that, after being forced out of Parliament, Paterson has also “stepped back” from his consultancy work. Wouldn’t he need that job more, now?
The BBC is reporting that Owen Paterson, whose refusal to accept a month’s suspension as an MP after being found to have been using Parliamentary space and equipment to carry out his second job sparked a scandal… no longer has his second job.
Apparently he has “stepped back from his consultancy work, for which he was earning £100,000 a year on top of his £81,932 MP’s salary”.
Really?
But his former colleagues – like Andrew Rosindell – have been arguing that MPs are, really, hard-up and need these second jobs to survive (poor dears!) so wouldn’t Paterson now need his consultancy work even more?
Perhaps he needed it more than his employers needed him, after his removal from the Green Benches. So I have to ask: did he step back or was he simply dropped?
It has been argued – persuasively – that MPs are only hired by firms to represent their interests to the government. We have seen a wealth of evidence to this effect in the awarding of Covid-19-related business contracts.
Owen Paterson is no longer an MP. And suddenly he no longer has his second job.
Doesn’t this simply confirm what was argued? And shouldn’t the likes of Laura Kuenssberg admit it, rather than shrouding it with obscure verbiage?
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Owen Paterson: he quit his job as an MP, but will he – and his corrupt Tory party – be REWARDED for it?
If you’ve been locked away for the past couple of days, here’s the situation:
In case you’ve missed all the twists and turns that led up to a government u-turn and to Owen Paterson’s resignation as an MP, here’s 6 minutes on a busy 24 hours. Produced by Harriet Ridley and Jack Kilbride. https://t.co/RjbD8irHGNpic.twitter.com/m4ToqxvaOi
The primary result of Paterson’s fall is that there will be a by-election in North Shropshire.
Let’s hope there’s a decent anti-corruption socialist candidate to get behind in the upcoming Shropshire North Parliamentary by-election. I don’t think for one minute that it will be provided by Starmer’s Labour Party.
No indeed. It will be an opportunity for Keir Starmer to parachute his ex-Tory trophy John Bercow in (perhaps), but Bercow would not be an acceptable choice for the Labour Left, so such a decision may lead to a further split in that party.
Labour has refused to countenance the possibility of a single Opposition candidate, chosen from among all the non-Tory parties. Presumably Starmer sees no advantage for him, especially if such a candidate – from another party – wins and then reneges on any agreements.
So the Conservatives are likely to retain North Shropshire, even if they put up a shaved monkey for the seat (and they probably will) – because the other parties are squabbling among themselves.
Meanwhile, the Tories who are actually occupying Parliamentary seats have been disgracing themselves all over the place. Here’s Nadhim Zahawi, admitting that he didn’t bother to read the report on Owen Paterson’s behaviour before voting to support him last Wednesday (November 3).
Note his scrabbling attempt to backtrack with a claim that he didn’t take in every detail. It’s nonsense, of course; he didn’t read the report. He was told to support Paterson so he did, without thinking. That’s Fascist Britain for you.
" I haven't read the report" is this government's equivalent of the dog ate my homework…and they think it's ok to use it as an excuse. Deplorable. #Corruptionhttps://t.co/iPiVT9QKsx
Why didn’t any of the interviewers ask Nadhim Zahawi when he realised what they did was wrong. Was it Wednesday evening just after he had voted in favour of corruption or Thursday morning when he read the newspapers.
— Pete @GOVE2.UK #FBPE#3.5% #FBPPR#GTTO#JOHNSONOUT (@HullfcPete) November 5, 2021
The fact is that Zahawi would not have been able to answer, as he would know that either position would be unsafe for him.
Still, his choice seems to have been less difficult than that faced by other Tory MPs who (presumably) were leaning against supporting Paterson.
We are told that they were threatened with sanctions if they didn’t vote the way Boris Johnson wanted:
Corruption. MPs are elected to serve their constituents not individual Tory MPs. Don’t we have bribery laws in this country? We need a total transformation of our political system & parties, and that includes @UKLabour. https://t.co/ycHZ9rtQNL
So much for justice, honesty and decency in Boris Johnson’s Conservative government. Even if you’re on his side, you have to do what you’re told, without thinking, or face sanctions. There’s another fairly recent national government that did much the same but I can’t quite recall where it was…
To prove the point, Tory Angela Richardson was fire from her job as a secretary to Michael Gove, because she stuck to her principles and refused to support Paterson. The following morning, when it had become clear that the Tories would not be able to save him and their plan to corrupt the standards system had failed, she was reinstated:
Government U Turning and trying to deny it. They can’t hide their actions. My god how much longer will we have to put up with these charlatans. #Sleazepic.twitter.com/MeHLEFZ9Xe
One would hope that her stand would put her in a much better position than her blindly line-toeing colleagues (including This Writer’s MP, Fay Jones. I’d like to know her reasons for supporting corruption!) in a general election. But in tribal England, that seems unlikely. Sad.
And what of Owen Paterson himself?
It'll be 'Sir' Owen Paterson in a month or two and then after Christmas Have I Got News for You. Followed by regular slots on paper reviews and Politics Live. And then various idiots tweeting: "he seems like a really nice bloke, he should be the PM.. "
Perhaps we should all lobby the production team of HIGNFY, never to invite a corrupt, disgraced former MP to guest on the show?
As for the knighthood, why stop there?
Boris Johnson’s spokesman repeatedly refuses to deny on the record that the prime minister offered Owen Paterson a peerage yesterday, or plans to give him one in the future.
So it seems he’ll be heading for the House of Lords – which is already bursting at the seams with Tories after previous efforts by David Cameron and Boris Johnson to fill the place with people who don’t deserve to be there:
Why wouldn't they give Owen a peerage? Afterall, they gave one to John Woodcock, who was suspended from Labour after claims he sexually harrassed an employee, refused to co-operate with investigation, left Labour so the investigation was stopped, & then told people to vote Tory! https://t.co/MVz7ODWQYs
Crime really does pay in Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, doesn’t it?*
It seems the Tories will keep the Parliamentary seat that their corrupt MP just vacated, even though their conduct throughout the affair shows that none of them deserve to be in Parliament at all.
And Paterson himself is set up for a nice little peerage and more than £300 per day for turning up at the House of Lords.
*All right, what he did is not defined as a crime, otherwise he would be facing criminal charges. But it is certainly not acceptable behaviour, as this entire affair demonstrates.
**What an illiterate! I meant cui bono. After realising my mistake I decided to leave it in, mostly because I reckon more people might read the article, simply to correct my spelling! What a world we live in.
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Owen Paterson: he won his vote in Parliament, but did he already realise that it wouldn’t do him any good?
All that corruption for nothing!
After so much effort from his Tory colleagues to save him from a 30-day suspension that might lead to a by-election, Owen Paterson has gone the whole hog:
Lobbyist Owen Paterson has quit his second job as an MP.
It seems he realised that he may face far more humiliation in a by-election than he does by simply bowing out gracelessly. And a few other calculations may have had something to do with it…
Owen Paterson should have been sacked. Boris Johnson should have resigned. Instead… A carefully choreographed exit that harms neither. That's show business!
Owen Paterson's resignation means he suffers no penalty whatsoever for his wrongdoing, and immediately collects a 24-year parliamentary pension higher than most salaries. In addition, he will no doubt soon find a portfolio of consultancy and non-executive director jobs.
I mean, he thinks politics has been cruel – to him!
Did Owen Paterson really just quit by saying: “I will remain a public servant but outside the cruel world of politics." Excuse me. But YOU are this cruel world of politics. YOU took the bribe. YOU engaged in corruption. YOU did wrong. This is on you. Own it.
Given the above information, there’s an important question to be asked (by Old Git, below):
It'll be interesting to see whether those companies that were paying Owen Paterson £100k p.a. still think he's worth the money, now that he's no longer an MP.
If they don't, surely that would make it pretty clear what they were paying for.
So disgraced Tory MP Owen Patterson used to be the boss of Boris Johnson’s wife Carrie Johnson. This explains why the Tories were so desperate to get Patterson off his well deserved punishment for influence peddling #ToryCriminalsUnfitToGovernpic.twitter.com/866thf8ihb
Aha! It seems Paterson may have a few secrets that may be worth something if he spills them.
Will he do a Dominic (Cummings) and stab his former boss in the back?
That would be fun, wouldn’t it?
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Owen Paterson: he won his vote in Parliament, but did he already realise that it wouldn’t do him any good?
The Conservative government has u-turned over its plans to stop corrupt MP Owen Paterson from being suspended and to change the system that demanded it.
Tories were under a three-line whip from Boris Johnson to support yesterday’s (November 3) decision – but it has backfired in their faces, prompting massive public and political protest.
The Conservatives expected the Standards Commissioner, Kathryn Stone, to resign after they showed such blatant disregard for her work, making it easy for them to dissolve the role and replace it – but she has not.
And now the Tories have realised that they cannot credibly impose a new system for investigating MPs without cross-party support, because the public would recognise it as corrupt Tories letting corrupt Tories off the hook. None of the other parties in Parliament have supported the plans.
So the plans are changing radically, as Sam Coates lays out in the video below:
BREAKING: The government has signalled a U-turn over the controversial blocking of a Conservative MP's suspension.@SamCoatesSky has the details.
The really good news is that Owen Paterson will now face another vote over his suspension, that he is likely to lose. This means he will probably be suspended from Parliament for 30 days after all. A Liberal Democrat MP has already secured a debate for Monday (November 8).
This makes him vulnerable to a recall petition and a by-election that he may lose – and it seems more likely that this will happen after yesterday’s debate and vote, because more people in his North Shropshire constituency now believe he has brought shame upon them.
The Tories still want to change the MPs’ disciplinary system in favour of their corruption, but they have accepted that linking it with Paterson’s case is too obvious; it makes that corruption plain.
Leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees Mogg, has said the link between the two issues needs to be severed.
But he is likely to be foiled in this, because that link has already been forged – by him and the other incompetents in the Tory leadership.
So the end result of all this jiggery-pokery is that Paterson is likely to be ousted from Parliament after all – and all the Tories who tried to save him, along with their government, have been tarred with the filth of their own corruption.
Good. It’s exactly what they deserve.
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The question of the day is, did we learn anything from the vote to save Owen Paterson from a 30-day suspension as an MP that we didn’t know already?
Debatable, isn’t it?
We know why he had been recommended for suspension – or at least, we should…
If you're wondering what the Owen Paterson case is basically about, it's this: the healthcare firm that kept him on a six-figure retainer won a £133m contract to produce Covid testing kits without even having to bid. Now, is that right or is that wrong?
Well… he may have been instrumental in getting Randox that contract. The real shocker is the fact that many of the Randox testing kits had to be withdrawn due to concerns about contamination – meaning care homes did not get the test kits they needed. And we know that the 30,000 or so care home deaths were a major controversy in the Covid-19 crisis.
If only the protective ring thrown around care homes had matched the one thrown around Owen Paterson.
But those are just consequences of his crime, which was simply to have undertaken paid lobbying for the companies that employed him – as Standards Committee member Chris Bryant made plain in his speech:
Chris Bryant(Standards Committee) lays out the charges against #OwenPaterson
"He did the one the thing he was banned from doing, lobby Minister's time & again in a way that conferred a direct benefit on his paying clients, that is expressly forbidden, it is a corrupt practice" pic.twitter.com/1r8UC9O7HZ
In fact, Bryant’s speech is well worth watching in full because it puts the whole situation in its proper context and damns those who have undermined Parliament’s processes in order to protect a corrupt colleague for bringing shame down upon all MPs:
Chris Bryant's closing contribution to the Owen Paterson debate is one of the most quietly effective and damning Commons speeches you'll hear in a while. Worth watching in full.https://t.co/Wf9RdBpaRk
We know why Paterson’s fellow Tory backbenchers wanted to stop it from happening: it made him vulnerable to a recall demand and to the possibility of losing his seat in a by-election.
We knew that he had claimed the investigation into his activities had been unfair and that worrying about it may have driven his wife to her death. It seems, however, that he had not suggested anything of the sort at the inquest into her death – so he was probably lying.
Hi @OwenPaterson I’m a bit confused. You said at the inquest for your poor wife that you knew of no reason she would take her own life. Last week you said it was because you were being investigated and might be ruined. Which was the truth?
— Madame Poubelle Pamplemousse #TakeBackBritain (@msmousse1) November 3, 2021
What does it say about the measure of a man who is willing to use the tragic death of his wife as a bulwark against legitimate scrutiny, and as an emotional gag to manipulate his critics into silence?
We know that the decision to suspend the current process of independent investigation of MPs and replace it with a process whereby Tories investigate each other will result in corrupt decisions; look at the way Boris Johnson has ignored flagrant breaches of the Ministerial Code – including his own – because as prime minister he was responsible for policing such breaches.
BREAKING: The House of Commons votes by 250 to 232 to overturn Conservative MP Owen Paterson’s suspension and rip up the Standards regime that found him guilty of breaking anti-corruption rules.
MPs have just voted to set up a committee to consider the standards system, and declined to approve Paterson's suspension. Our Parliament is a complete and utter cess-pit of bribery and corruption.
Tory MPs have just voted to approve sleaze in the workings of the House of Commons, and effectively ended the rule of law with regard to their affairs. A tradition dating back to 1695 has been ended. MPs can now just be the hired hands of corporate lobbyists. #Theendofdemocracy
How long will it be before Johnson is back on £250,000 a year from the Telegraph whilst still being PM? Or perhaps a few Russian contracts might help him out instead? Who knows what will happen now…..
Owen Paterson MP was found by a watchdog to have "repeatedly" used his position as an MP to benefit two companies who paid him £100,000 a year. Parliament just voted to let him off.
It turns out that fully a quarter of the Tories who lined up to support Paterson – and corruption – have themselves corruptly broken Parliament’s rules:
The Tories were fully aware that they were exposing their own corruption to the gaze of the world – and were completely comfortable with it. Some of them appeared on television, attempting to dismiss criticisms by saying they were unhappy with the investigation system rather than with its findings against Paterson. And they were shot down as hypocrites:
“I'm aware how this looks,” says Conservative MP Miriam Cates, who will not vote to suspend fellow Tory Owen Paterson, who was found to have broken standards rules
And we now know that Labour under Keir Starmer is not interested in tackling Tory corruption because 28 Labour MPs failed to vote against the motion that got Paterson off the hook; if they had, the attempt to pervert Parliamentary justice would have failed.
28 Labour MP's let Paterson off the hook and failed to inflict a defeat on the tories by not voting. Some may have been paired but not all of them. What absolute failure in opposition.
If Labour is a serious Opposition it now has to cease cooperation with the government on the workings of the Commons – to force the Tories to own the corruption that they are now actively promoting.
Ultimately we know that, while this vote superficially helps Owen Paterson keep his job despite his corruption, the deeper effect is to further undermine faith that our elected government is trustworthy – a faith that has already been perilously eroded by all the previous corruptions of Boris Johnson and his crooked cronies:
This is the most corrupt Government in modern history.
I can’t even begin to describe the deep down gut wrenching raging anger I feel at what Johnsons reckless, lying, law breaking Government has done to our Parliament, our democracy & our country. If I have to make it my life’s ambition to see it thrown from office so be it
Don’t forget Johnsons Gov’t plans to strip judges of powers to review its decisions, plans to strip the Electoral Commission of its power to prosecute law-breaking, repeatedly ignores the Ministerial Code & repeatedly breaks the law. It has no comprehension of right & wrong
Why is his local constituency party not speaking out to deselect him – is every member of the Tory Party corrupt – it is looking that way as so many of their MP's have carried out borderline illegal activities and stay in situ.
A Tory MP can accept a £100K bribe and nothing happens, but a nurse can't accept more than a box of chocolates because this would be a conflict of interests. Let that sink in.
One thing we also knew – that came out strongly here – is that current Commons Speaker Lyndsay Hoyle is not strong enough to restrain the Tories’ corruption:
Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle should never have accepted Andrea Leadsom's amendment to Owen Paterson's punishment Bill.
The vote should be on the independent commissioners findings and recommendation only.
Parliament will now act on the amendment that protected Paterson (proposed by Andrea Leadsom, by the way; let’s make sure the right people get the blame).
We will see how the process unfolds. My guess is that it will scandalise and outrage the public to a huge degree – if they get to hear about it.
So please feel free to share this article – especially to people who voted for the shower of scum that was on display during this debate and vote.
Oh, and you can check how your own MP voted, here:
Here’s a list of every MP who just voted to scrap Parliament’s anti-corruption rules and let a corrupt MP off the hook https://t.co/oOXDqrkLVt
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Master and servant: Owen Paterson with his boss, Peter Fitzgerald of Randox. Funny that… wasn’t Paterson supposed to be working for the people of North Shropshire?
Here’s the story:
Today the Tories will effectively vote to legalise six-figure corporate sponsorship of MPs
Former Environment Secretary Owen Paterson has committed “egregious” breaches of Parliamentary rules by taking nearly three times as much cash for “paid advocacy” of private firms that employed him.
He broke official lobbying rules, and he smeared the independent commissioner who investigated these breaches.
His advocacy of one of the companies, Randox, meant faulty Covid-19 testing kits were supplied to care homes and had to be recalled. The resulting delay may have caused the deaths of 30,000 care home residents and staff.
The Independent Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards ruled that he must be suspended from Parliament for 30 working days. The length of time means a by-election could be called and he could be ejected from Parliament altogether. Read the full facts here.
Well, his fellow Tories aren’t having that!
They have launched a Parliamentary motion saying the investigation was flawed and that Paterson’s case should be examined by a committee of MPs – dominated by Tories. They want to sack the standards commissioner, Kathryn Stone, and dissolve the cross-party Standards Committee.
The result would be that Tory MPs get to judge whether their friends should be punished for corruption.
Obviously, this means corruption will run rampant in the future. And we all know it:
Owen Patterson, outraged he’s being held accountable for paid lobbying. It’s a clear breach of the rules. He only got suspended, he doesn’t have to pay it back.
Now Johnson is trying to change the rules to remove that sliver of accountability, corrupt bastard.#JohnsonOut
If you investigate a Tory MP and find him guilty of sleaze your reward may be the sack. (Just in case you were wondering why the police show so little interest in corruption in procurement.) pic.twitter.com/u9h950VetF
Whips want to junk the ENTIRE system which aimed to curb MPs involvement in policing their own rules and conduct
There’s a “Andrea Leadsom amendment” which refuses to endorse the punishment for OP and sets up a talking shop to discuss replacing the existing investigation system
Say what you like about this stuff but it is incontrovertibly normal. This is what happens in UK 2021. This is the society you eagerly & knowingly helped to bring about pic.twitter.com/VKfPS3mYne
This is what Johnson means when he smirks that he is in favour of having his cake and eating it: his govt want to both write the rules and break them with impunity. And if they get caught, they just vote to avoid accountability. Dangerous times for democracy. #NPWAhttps://t.co/DTOgMsSZzz
This is a government that won’t hold an inquiry into the mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic (of which the Paterson case is just a small part) – because it is “too busy” dealing with the ongoing crisis – but will happily change its timetable to rescue a corrupt colleague:
The UK’s governing party: We can’t have an inquiry now on the mismanagement of #COVID19 because “we’re too busy fighting the pandemic”.
Also: We’ve changed the parliamentary schedule to have an urgent debate to save a Tory MP who got caught breaking the rules. https://t.co/LTFqQC931h
— Oz – Sickrabbit Soundlabs 100% PRO LIFE 💙# (@SICKRABBIT67) November 3, 2021
Rob Roberts (pictured), the Tory MP who was himself suspended from Parliament for sexually harassing staff, and was only readmitted earlier this week, is one of the signatories who supports the new amendment:
Remember when the Tories gave rapist Charlie Elphicke the whip back so he could take part in the vote of confidence on Theresa May? https://t.co/YO0Lrz6MbE
(In fairness, Elphicke was convicted on three counts of sexual assault, not rape.)
And “Loathsome” Lucy Allan, Telford’s Tory, claimed that MPs should be allowed to appeal, and to take their case to a tribunal, as in other workplace disciplinary actions. This is more hypocrisy.
In any workplace disciplinary action you are entitled to: know the case against you, have a fair hearing, and to an appeal. If you are unhappy with the outcome, you can then apply to a tribunal. MPs should be treated no less favourably in their workplace. https://t.co/RLuSKGlZjL
As Labour’s Lisa Nandy pointed out in a TV interview, the Tories have imposed a system on benefit claimants in which they are denied the right of appeal or of resorting to a tribunal.
Lisa Nandy: This is the most appalling double standards.. Owen Paterson has broken the parliamentary rules.. & nobody is disputing that.. so there has to be sanctions.. as it matters for trust in politics, it matters for trust in govt & what the govt is doing is undermining that. pic.twitter.com/qIvEyibUlr
So Loathsome Lucy in fact wants preferential treatment for MPs. Otherwise why don’t they allow the same right to benefit claimants?
This Writer’s opinion:
Owen Paterson took hundreds of thousands of pounds from private firms and there’s a strong argument that tens of thousands of people died as a result. He should be suspended from Parliament. He should face the threat of being voted out in a by-election.
But he won’t.
The Tory government is so corrupt that it wants its MPs to be able to do what they want – no matter who dies as a result – with absolutely no repercussions.
And with a massive Parliamentary majority that they secured by making fools of millions of UK voters – they will spit on democracy, due process and accountability.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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Master and servant: Owen Paterson with his boss, Peter Fitzgerald of Randox. Funny that… wasn’t Paterson supposed to be working for the people of North Shropshire?
North Shropshire’s Tory MP Owen Paterson has turned out to be as corrupt as they come – using his position as a public representative to boost the private interests of two companies. And it seems thousands of people may have died as a result.
Paterson is set to be punished for corruptly using his Parliamentary position to win contracts for two companies that employ him.
Yes, it is corruption. Yes, it is against Parliamentary rules. He should be booted out of the Palace of Westminster and told never to come back. In a proper, working democracy he would be arrested and sent to prison.
Would you like to know what will actually happen?
He’ll be suspended from Parliament for 30 working days.
That’s right – he gets a month’s extra holiday.
Here’s the report on Sky News:
The committee on standards have recommended that Tory MP Owen Paterson be suspended from the house for 30 sitting days.
This was a serious breach of the MPs rules… as he used his privileged position to benefit two companies… & he has brought the house into disrepute pic.twitter.com/tGjNTqzxdJ
The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Stone opened an investigation into the MP following accusations he had lobbied on behalf of two companies who employed him.
Her report said he was a paid consultant to Randox and Lynn’s Country Foods and had made approaches to the Food Standards Agency and Department for International Development ministers about the companies.
The commissioner also found Mr Paterson had breached the MPs’ code of conduct by using his parliamentary office on 25 occasions for business meetings with clients between October 2016 and February 2020 and in sending two letters relating to business interests on House of Commons headed notepaper.
The report noted that there was no immediate financial benefit secured by the two companies-
Oh, really?
The healthcare firm that kept Tory MP Owen Paterson on a six-figure retainer won a £133m contract to produce Covid testing kits without any other company getting the opportunity to bid. That's Britain in 2021.
That would be Randox Health. Perhaps the Commissioner didn’t notice this significant fact because her report only goes as far as February 2020.
Randox was awarded its £133 million contract in March 2020 – and, yes, it was a closed process – unadvertised and with no other companies being asked to bid.
A month later, Paterson was a party to a call between Randox and James Bethell, then the Tory minister responsible for Covid-19 testing supplies.
Randox was hired to supply 2.7 million testing kits – but 750,000 of them were withdrawn after spot checks in July found that some of the kits, supplied by a Chinese manufacturer but sent out by Randox, were not sterile and could therefore be contaminated.
The failure delayed plans to provide regular testing for English care home residents and staff. We later discovered that Tory government failures to protect care homes resulted in around 30,000 unnecessary deaths.
But that was no concern for Randox – its contract was extended for a further six months in October last year. Again, the process was closed – unadvertised, with no other companies permitted to bid.
In fact, it should have been to safeguard the health of the people of the UK – especially, in this case, care home residents and staff. Instead, thousands died – possibly because he vouched for a company that provided substandard testing kits.
And his punishment is a 30-day holiday.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
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Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
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