Boris Johnson admits fault in government response to Tory sleaze saga
Boris Johnson has admitted the Owen Paterson sleaze scandal “could have been handled better … by me” as the Tories prepare to perform a humiliating parliamentary U-turn tomorrow.
The Prime Minister faced a barrage of questions about why he hadn’t apologised for the saga in today’s press conference, before finally admitting some fault for the government’s response.
It comes as MPs will tomorrow overturn a pair of House of Commons votes rammed through parliament by the government and a large group of Tory backbenchers to get Paterson – who was found to have broken Westminster’s lobbying rules – off the hook for a recommended 30-day suspension.
Last week’s votes would have seen parliament dismantle the disciplinary process, by creating a new Tory-majority committee to hear cases, before Downing Street U-turned and decided to scrap the whole episode in the face of a serious backlash.
Government whips will now march Conservative MPs back into parliament to undo it all tomorrow in fresh parliamentary votes.
Paterson resigned shortly after Johnson’s U-turn, however the affair has sparked a myriad of press stories detailing sleaze and corruption allegations against Tory MPs.
The ongoing saga has allowed Labour to overtake the Tories in polling, with today’s Observer/Opinium poll giving Sir Keir Starmer’s party a one-point lead.
Johnson has been under pressure to apologise for the saga, especially after Rishi Sunak earlier this week said the government needs to “do better”.
Speaking at a press conference today, Johnson said: ” Of course, I think things certainly could have been handled better – let me put it that way. By me.”
He also said the commissioner for parliamentary standards, Kathryn Stone, should keep her job after Tory MPs were calling for her to go last week.
“I think the commissioner has a job to do and a huge amount of work to do and she needs to get on and be allowed to do it,” he said.
“Whether the system is capable of improvement or not is a matter for the standards committee and the house.”
Transport secretary Grant Shapps and House of Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg were today dragged into the ongoing scandal over Tory MPs’ outside interests.
The Sunday Times revealed that Shapps, a passionate recreational flyer, had intervened in government decisions to stop housing developments on former airfields after lobbying from interest groups.
The Mail on Sunday revealed that Rees-Mogg had not declared £6m of loans taken out through one of his companies.
Former attorney general Geoffrey Cox has been in the eye of the media storm this week, after it was revealed that he had made hundreds of thousands of pounds for giving legal advice to the British Virgin Islands on a corruption case that has been brought forward by the UK government.
City PM exclusively revealed on Thursday that Rugby Conservative MP Mark Pawsey, who gets paid £30,000 a year to chair a UK packaging lobby, has spoken in parliament to call for looser environmental laws to benefit plastics producers.
Labour has called for an investigation into Cox by Westminster’s standards commissioner, after The Times found a video that appeared to show him attending a virtual hearing on behalf of the BVI in his House of Commons office.
Sunak earlier this week said he regretted last week’s scandal over disgraced ex-MP Owen Paterson.
“On the broader point and just reflecting over recent events, I think for us as a government, it’s fair to say that we need to do better than we did last week and we know that,” he said.