Boris Johnson will back a bid to save a Conservative former minister from an immediate suspension as part of an overhaul of MPs’ standards rules, Sky News understands.
Ex-cabinet minister Owen Paterson is facing a 30-day suspension from the House of Commons for breaching lobbying rules due to his paid consultancy work on behalf of two companies.
But Mr Paterson strongly denies the allegations and a group of his Tory colleagues are seeking to establish a new Commons committee to reconsider his case.
Sky News understands the prime minister will support the effort by backbench Conservatives in a likely Commons vote on Wednesday afternoon.
Ex-cabinet minister Andrea Leadsom, a former leader of the House of Commons, had already secured the support of more than 50 Tory MPs for an amendment to a Commons motion on Mr Paterson’s suspension, which will now also be supported by the government.
The group of Tory MPs backing Ms Leadsom’s amendment was already likely to have been large enough to win a Commons vote to pause Mr Paterson’s suspension even without the government’s support.
Labour accused Mr Johnson of encouraging government ministers to “vote for a return to the worst of the 1990s Tory sleaze culture”.
Shadow leader of the Commons, Thangam Debbonaire, said: “A vote for this amendment would turn the clock back to the era of Neil Hamilton, cash for questions and no independent standards process.”
But a government source said concerns about the standards system had been “bubbling away for a while” and that Mr Paterson’s case was “the straw that broke the camel’s back”.
“The fact that this amendment has been tabled by a former leader of the House and has attached as many signatures as it has, shows the amount of concern about the standards process,” they added.
“It has to be taken seriously.”
Ms Leadsom’s amendment, if approved in a Commons vote later on Wednesday, would see the creation of a new Commons committee.
The nine-person committee, with a Conservative majority and led by Tory ex-cabinet minister John Whittingdale, would then review the current standards system and consider whether the case against Mr Paterson should be rethought.
Last month, Mr Paterson was found to have “repeatedly used his privileged position” to benefit Randox, a clinical diagnostics company, and Lynn’s Country Foods, a meat processor and distributor.
The allegations against the North Shropshire MP, who was environment secretary from 2012 to 2014, relate to his conduct between October 2016 and February 2020.
Following a two-year investigation, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, Kathryn Stone, said Mr Paterson had breached rules prohibiting paid advocacy by making multiple approaches to government departments and ministers for the two companies.
A Commons committee, including four Tory MPs, supported Ms Stone’s findings and recommended Mr Paterson should be suspended from the Commons for a month.
This is a punishment that needs to be approved by MPs in a vote on Wednesday’s motion, which Ms Leadsom and her colleagues are now seeking to amend.
Mr Paterson has accused Ms Stone of admitting to him she “made up her mind” before the allegations were put to him and claimed none of his 17 witnesses were interviewed.
In a lengthy statement, in which he declared he was “not guilty”, the 65-year-old also said he was raising serious issues about food contamination in his contact with officials.
And he claimed the investigation “undoubtedly played a major role” in his wife, Rose Paterson, taking her own life in June last year.
Treasury minister John Glen told Sky News on Wednesday there was “a matter of concern around the procedure” through which Ms Stone’s investigation reached its conclusions.
“I think most people would agree, when there is a dispute over someone’s conduct there has got to be fair and due process before an outcome and a determination of the consequences is made,” he said.
“I think that’s the area the House of Commons, across all parties, will want to look at today.”
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But Labour’s shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy accused Conservative MPs of “the most appalling double standards”.
“In 100 years this has never happened where members of the House of Commons have tried to completely not just overturn a decision that’s been made by a parliamentary committee and by the independent standards commissioner,” she told Sky News.
“But also to try and jettison the system that governs it. I’ve got constituents who make mistakes on their claim for Universal Credit who are hit with large fines with no right of appeal.
“And yet you’ve got an MP who’s found by a committee, with Tory MPs on it, to have broken the parliamentary rules, to have been lobbying for a private company and using his office to do so.
“Not only is he complicit in this double standards, but so are all of those Tories who are supporting this bid today. It’s incredible that they think they can do this without any repercussions.”
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