What the Owen Paterson Tory sleaze row is really about

As world leaders depart from the COP26 summit in Glasgow, a row is brewing in the House of Commons on ‘Tory sleaze’. After the parliamentary commissioner for standards Kathryn Stone found that former cabinet minister Owen Paterson had seriously breached the rules on lobbying, the standards committee recommended that Paterson should be suspended from parliament for 30 days. That recommendation went to a vote in the Commons on Wednesday and unusually (given the suspension ought to be a formality), the government moved to block it.

Ever since the report’s findings were made public, there has been talk of a ‘stitch-up’ among Tory backbenchers. The commissioner’s report found that Paterson had approached ministers and the Food Standards Agency on behalf of two companies he worked for, which amounted to ‘an egregious case of paid advocacy, that he repeatedly used his privileged position to benefit two companies for whom he was a paid consultant, and that this has brought the House into disrepute’.