UK politics live standards watchdog calls for rapid action to limit MPs time on second jobs

According to the BBC, Labour activists in Coventry are trying to organise trigger ballots that could lead to two of the city’s MP, Taiwo Owatemi and Zarah Sultana. It says some activists are unhappy about the way Owatemi and Sultana were chosen ahead of the 2019 general election, because local councillors were excluded from the shortlists. A successful trigger ballot leads to an MP having to face a full reselection battle, with other candidates standing, although a rule change passed at the Labour conference has made it significantly harder than it was for a reselection contest to be triggered.

Andrea Leadsom, the Conservative former leader of the Commons who tabled the amendment backed by the government last week shelving the proposal to suspend Owen Paterson from the Commons for 30 days, has written to colleagues apologising for what happened, my colleague Aubrey Allegretti reports.

Aubrey Allegretti (@breeallegretti)

Andrea Leadsom has written to Conservative MPs to apologise for the handling of last week's amendment she proposed to the Owen Paterson suspension motion.

She has had plenty of supporters privately - one says the government "can sod off giving her the blame for it".

November 11, 2021

As Aubrey revealed in a very good backgrounder last week, although the amendment was tabled by Leadsom, in effect it was a government amendment cobbled together at the behest of Paterson’s allies, who believed he had been the victim of an injustice (a view shared by few people who have actually read in full the report criticising him). Leadsom was asked to put her name to it because she is seen as less polarising than the key Paterson supporters, and her work as Commons leader setting up a new system for dealing with complaints of bullying and sexual harassment by MPs was widely admired.

The more Tories who do apologise for what happened last week, the more awkward it gets for Boris Johnson, who is refusing to say sorry himself.

Boris Johnson is planning to travel to Paris tomorrow for a meeting with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, according to the Telegraph’s Joe Barnes.

Joe Barnes (@Barnes_Joe)

Hearing Boris Johnson will travel to Paris on Friday to meet Emmanuel Macron. Perhaps a deal on fish in the offing?

November 11, 2021

Boris Johnson has welcomed the joint plan from the US and China to work together on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson)

I welcome the strong show of commitment from China and the US last night to step up climate action this decade and keep 1.5C in reach.

This is a boost to negotiations as we go into the final days of @COP26 and continue working to deliver an ambitious outcome for the planet.

November 11, 2021

The UK’s most prominent standards watchdog has urged the government to act rapidly to address concerns about MPs’ second jobs.

In an interview with the Today programme, Lord Evans, the former MI5 boss who now chairs the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said that there was no need for a lengthy review of what needed to be done because proposals were already “on the table”. He told the programme:

I’ve been slightly slightly frustrated over the last few days at people calling for a review of MPs’ second jobs, and this and that. Our committee ... has made recommendations on a number of these areas, including only last week. Those are on the table. They offer a way forward now, which means that we can be confident that our standards bodies are independent, that our public life is being defended, and we don’t need to set up a royal commission or a public inquiry.

Evans accepted that the Commons standards committee (a different body) will also be publishing recommendations soon. But after that report was out, it should be possible to “take action on these things rapidly”, he said.

At the moment, as there is such an upwelling of public concern on standards issues, there is an opportunity to look at what is already on the table, what has already been researched, what we’ve consulted widely on.

Asked what should be done about the rules around second jobs for MPs, Evans said that his committee did a lot of polling before it published a report on this topic in 2018 and he said the views of the public were “quite sophisticated”. He went on:

They recognised that there were certain jobs that it was right and appropriate that MPs should be able to hold, in addition to their main responsibilities. But we recommended that MP should not accept any paid work to provide services such as parliamentary strategists or advisers or consultants, because that was in tension with their main job.

And we said that the critical thing was that nothing that an MP does should get in the way of their ability to work in support of their constituents. So the amount of work that they do, the sort of work, needs to be judged against that. If somebody is spending a huge amount of their time on a second job, then they can’t be made maintaining the support for their constituents.

The 2018 report recommended a ban on MPs working as political consultants. This would have prevented the Owen Paterson scandal, because if this rule had been in place, Paterson would not have been able to take up the two consultancy posts that got him into trouble in the first place. Paterson was found to have broken the current rules, not because he had those jobs, but because he used them for paid advocacy, which is already banned.

But the 2018 report also said the rules should be changed so that any outside work undertaken by MPs should be “within reasonable limits and should not prevent them from fully carrying out their range of duties”. Given what has emerged about the scale of Sir Geoffrey Cox’s legal work, this rule would almost certainly force him to cut back. According to the Daily Mail, in some years Cox has devoted almost 30 hours a week to his legal work. (Cox said yesterday that he regularly works 70 hours per week, and that casework for his constituents is always given primary importance.)

The Committee on Standards in Public Life does not investigate specific cases of wrongdoing. But it was set up to monitor standards across all areas of public life, and to make recommendations for improvements.

The number of people in England waiting to start routine hospital treatment has risen to a new record high, PA Media reports.

In his interview with Times Radio Paul Scully, the business minister, also suggested that Labour’s attacks on the Conservatives over second jobs could turn out to be counter-productive. He said:

What I’m saying is that it tends to erode trust in politicians in general, ultimately. So what seems like a short term political attack line, if you like, from other parties, tends to just erode the trust in politicians in general.

But Scully did accept that wrongdoing needed to be tackled, and he accepted that the government’s decision last week to whip its MPs to vote for the motion sparing Owen Paterson from a Commons suspension was “regrettable”.

With the sleaze allegations of the last week largely focused on the Tories, CCHQ must have been anxious to have something to throw at the opposition, and that perhaps explains a bizarre story in some of the papers today claiming that two SNP MPs and one Labour MP got drunk on a flight to Gibraltar on a visit organised by the armed forces parliamentary scheme. Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, is reportedly planning to complain to the SNP and Labour leaders about the conduct of their MPs.

Paul Scully, the business minister, was on interview duty for No 10 this morning, and in an interview with Times Radio he was happy to comment on the story. Asked if he agreed the story was “not a good look”, he agred. He went on:

We’ve got to show responsibility. We are leaders. We - all 650 MPs - are leaders in their own right. And to be held to a high standard and clearly, you know, with the armed forces over there, we’ve got to show ... our respect to our armed forces as well.

Some of the reports have not named some or all of the MPs, in what may be a sign that in-house lawyers fear some of the allegations would not stand up in court.

But the two SNP MPs named by the Daily Telegraph have used Twitter to deny the story. These are from David Linden.

David Linden MP (@DavidLinden)

Honoured to be visiting service personnel in Gibraltar as part of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme. Appreciating the opportunity to meet with and thank service personnel for everything they do. pic.twitter.com/EmdB9NG5wG

November 10, 2021 David Linden MP (@DavidLinden)

2/3 - Incredibly disappointed by what appears to be a bizarre Tory smear campaign in the media tonight but I’ll leave the politics to others.

November 10, 2021 David Linden MP (@DavidLinden)

3/3 Instead, I’ll continue to focus on participating in briefings with service personnel, meetings with local officials, as well as continuing to undertake training exercises and hear first hand from those who serve in the Armed Services here in Gibraltar.

November 10, 2021

And these are from Drew Hendry.

Drew Hendry MP #ScotlandsChoice (@drewhendrySNP)

I'm honoured to be attending the Armed Forces Parliamentary visit to Gibraltar, ahead of Armistice Day, to see the brilliant work of our troops. pic.twitter.com/xUqaYdaGo6

November 10, 2021 Drew Hendry MP #ScotlandsChoice (@drewhendrySNP)

It's deeply disappointing that Tory MPs have made false claims in a shameless attempt to divert attention from the Tory corruption scandal engulfing Westminster.

That is a matter for their conscience. I'll focus on doing my job and respecting our troops as we mark Armistice Day

November 10, 2021

Good morning. The Tory sleaze news horror show shows no signs of abating, and there are two aspects to it that must be causing alarm in No 10. First, this isn’t just an obsession for papers on the left; papers on the right, that normally support the Conservatives, have embraced it with gusto. And, second, once a narrative like this gains traction (“Tory MPs are on the take”, to put it bluntly), then it becomes open season for the media, with all sorts of stories that in the past might have been ignored suddenly getting scrutiny because they now qualify as newsworthy. This story has reached that point.

Today’s papers are still full of revelations about Sir Geoffrey Cox. The Guardian focuses on the £6m he has earned from his legal work, the Daily Mail has done a similar calculation, while the Daily Mirror has a go at him for claiming for accommodation in London while at the same time renting out a flat he owns in the capital. But it is not just Cox who is in the news. Other Conservatives facing uncomfortable questions about second jobs include Julian Smith, the former Northern Ireland secretary (in the Guardian), Mark Pawsey (in City AM), Philip Dunne, a former defence minister (in the Times), and Alun Cairns, the former Welsh secretary (in the Times). It is not anything like as dire as the 2009 MPs’ expenses scandal, but there are some parallels.

This morning we have had a potentially significant intervention from Rishi Sunak, the chancellor. In interviews primarily about the growth figures (mildly disappointing), he said the government needs “to do better” on standards than it did last week. He told Sky News:

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.

In one respect this is not surprising. Ministers have admitted that it was a mistake to get MPs to vote for the motion shelving the Owen Paterson report, and so of course the government has to do better. But, because they are coming from a cabinet minster who (at least until now) has not been implicated in controversy about sleaze or second jobs, and one seen as the favourite to be next PM, Sunak’s words also sound like an implied rebuke to Boris Johnson.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: NHS England publishes its latest waiting time figures.

Morning: Boris Johnson chairs what is set to be a lengthy meeting of cabinet. Originally they were planning a cabinet awayday at Chequers. The venue has been switched to Downing Street, but the agenda will be the same, focusing on levelling up, ahead of the publication of the levelling up white paper later this year. There will also be a political cabinet.

12pm: John Swinney, the deputy first minister, takes first minister’s questions in the Scottish parliament.

I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com

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