Owen Paterson must regret his appeal to the European Court of Human Rights

The European Court of Human Rights has thrown out a challenge by former cabinet minister Owen Paterson. The ex-Tory MP, accused of breaking lobby rules, took the government to court in a bid to have a 2021 parliamentary investigation into his conduct declared unfair. That Paterson went to the Strasbourg Court in the first place might be considered a remarkable show of chutzpah (or perhaps simply rank hypocrisy) given that he had previously campaigned for the UK to leave the ECHR, prior to his own personal travails.

Paterson’s claim to the European Court of Human Rights was always rather quixotic. During Boris Johnson’s premiership, an investigation by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner was initiated following reports that Paterson had lobbied for two companies for which he was a paid consultant. The Commissioner concluded that he had breached the Code of Conduct for members and that his breaches were both ‘serious and numerous’.