A Conservative former minister has avoided a suspension after Tory MPs backed a government-sanctioned amendment to stop it in a Commons vote, despite anger at a decision Labour claim will inflict “enduring damage” upon parliament’s reputation.
Owen Paterson was facing a 30-day suspension from the House for breaching lobbying rules over his paid consultancy work on behalf of two companies.
In a statement released before the vote, a Number 10 spokesman said: “This isn’t about one case but providing members of parliament from all political parties with the right to a fair hearing.
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“Therefore the Commons should seek cross-party agreement on a new appeals process whereby the conclusions of the standards committee and the Commissioner can be looked at.”
Sky News also saw a letter from Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg urging Conservative MPs to support the amendment, which was tabled by senior Tory Andrea Leadsom.
Opening the debate in the Commons, Mr Rees-Mogg said concerns over the investigation into Mr Paterson had become “too numerous to ignore”.
Image: Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom leaves Downing Street, London, after a National Security Council meeting. Pic: PA
The Commons leader claimed he came “not to defend” Mr Paterson but to “consider the process by which he has been tried”.
He added: “It is not for me to judge him, others have done that, but was the process a fair one?”
Labour hit out at the move, accusing the PM of encouraging ministers to “vote for a return to the worst of the 1990s sleaze culture”.
Shadow Commons leader Thangam Debbonaire said: “If today the amendment passes or if the motion falls entirely, it sends the message that when we don’t like the rules, we just break the rules – when someone breaks the rules, we just change the rules.”
She added: “The enduring damage that this would do to Parliament’s reputation is something that none of us should be prepared to consider.”
The issue was raised at Prime Minister’s Questions, with Mr Johnson defending the government’s stance.
“The issue in this case, which involved a serious family tragedy, is whether a member of this House had a fair opportunity to make representations in this case and whether, as a matter of natural justice, our procedures in this House allow for proper appeal,” he told MPs.
“If it was a police officer, a teacher, a doctor, we would expect the independent process to be followed and not changed after the verdict,” she said.
“It is one rule for them and one rule for the rest of us.”
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‘When they break the rules, they remake them’
Referring to the case of Delyn MP Rob Roberts, who was found by an independent panel earlier this year to have sexually harassed a member of his staff, Ms Rayner said: “They can’t change the rules to stop sexual harassment, but they can change the rules to allow cash for access.”
Now that the amendment has been passed, a nine-person committee with a Conservative majority and led by Tory ex-cabinet minister John Whittingdale will review the current standards system and reconsider the case against Mr Paterson.
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 two companies.
The North Shropshire MP 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.
Mr Paterson earns more than £110,000 per year in total for his consultancy roles for the two companies.
The allegations against Mr Paterson, who was environment secretary from 2012 to 2014, relate to his conduct between October 2016 and February 2020.
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.
But Mr Paterson 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.
A suspension from the Commons has to be approved by MPs, hence Wednesday’s vote.
If MPs had approved the suspension, Mr Paterson would have been subject to a recall petition.
This could have seen a by-election triggered in his constituency if more than 10% of local voters signed the petition.
Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK
Lawmakers in the US states of Minnesota and Alabama filed companion bills to identical existing bills that if passed into law, would allow each state to buy Bitcoin.
The Minnesota Bitcoin Act, or HF 2946, was introduced to the state’s House by Republican Representative Bernie Perryman on April 1, following an identical bill introduced on March 17 by GOP state Senator Jeremy Miller.
Meanwhile, on the same day in Alabama, Republican state Senator Will Barfoot introduced Senate Bill 283, while a bi-partisan group of representatives led by Republican Mike Shaw filed the identical House Bill 482, which allows for the state to invest in crypto, but essentially limits it to Bitcoin (BTC).
Twin Alabama bills don’t explicitly name Bitcoin
Minnesota’s Bitcoin Act would allow the state’s investment board to invest state assets in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and permit state employees to add crypto to retirement accounts.
It would also exempt crypto gains from state income taxes and give residents the option to pay state taxes and fees with Bitcoin.
The twin Alabama bills don’t explicitly identify Bitcoin, but would limit the state’s crypto investment into assets that have a minimum market value of $750 billion, a criterion that only Bitcoin currently meets.
26 Bitcoin reserve bills now introduced in the US
Introducing identical bills is not uncommon in the US and is typically done to speed up the bicameral legislative process so laws can pass more quickly.
Bills to create a Bitcoin reserve have been introduced in 26 US states, with Arizona currently the closest to passing a law to make one, according to data from the bill tracking website Bitcoin Laws.
Arizona currently leads in the US state Bitcoin reserve race. Source: Bitcoin Laws
Pennsylvania was one of the first US states to introduce a Bitcoin reserve bill, in November 2024. However, the initiative was reportedly eventually rejected, with similar bills also killed in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.
Montana, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Wyoming are the five states thathave rejected Bitcoin reserve initiatives. Source: Bitcoin Laws
According to a March 3 report by Barron’s, “red states” like Montana have faced setbacks to the Bitcoin reserve initiatives amid political confrontations between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.
Update (April 3, 5:43 am UTC): This article has been updated to add information on the STABLE Act and GENIUS Act.
The US House Financial Services Committee has passed a Republican-backed stablecoin framework bill, which will now head to the House floor for a full vote.
The Committee passed the Stablecoin Transparency and Accountability for a Better Ledger Economy, or STABLE Act, with a 32-17 vote on April 2, with six Democrats voting in favor.
The bill was introduced on Feb. 6 by committee Chair French Hill and the chair of its Digital Assets Subcommittee, Bryan Steil — reportedly drafted with the help of the world’s largest stablecoin issue, Tether.
The bill would provide rules around payment stablecoins, a crypto token tied to a currency such as the US dollar, and aims to ensure issuers give information about their business and how they back their tokens.
During an earlier markup session, the committee’s leading Democrat, Maxine Waters, who later voted against the bill, criticized her Republican peers for “setting an unacceptable and dangerous precedent” with the STABLE Act.
She said President Donald Trump could use the bill to allow his family’s stablecoin to be used in government payments, and argued the bill validates Trump “and his insiders’ efforts to write rules of the road that will enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.”
In late March, the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial crypto venture launched a stablecoin, World Liberty Financial USD (USD1). Meanwhile, the US Housing Department, which oversees social housing, was reportedly looking to experiment with using stablecoins for some of its functions.
Stablecoin GENIUS Act also weaves through Congress
Other stablecoin-related bills are also working their way through Congress, including the Republican-led Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins, or GENIUS Act, which lays out oversight and reserve rules for issuers.
The US Senate Banking Committee voted through the GENIUS Act in an 18-6 vote on March 13, after Senator Bill Hagerty, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, updated it following consultation with the Committee’s Democrats.
Before the vote, Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said the updated GENIUS Act made “significant improvements to a number of important provisions” in areas such as consumer protections and authorized stablecoin issuers.
Both the STABLE Act and GENIUS Act will now wait until debate time on the floor of the House and Senate, respectively, before they head for a floor vote.
Crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett reported on X that two unnamed crypto lobbyists said there is likely to be “a coordinated push behind the scenes over the next few weeks to get the two bills to mirror each other, as there are still some differences between them.”
Doing so would “avoid having to set up a so-called conference committee which is formed so members from both chambers can negotiate to create a final version of the bill everyone agrees on,” she added.
Tulip Siddiq has told Sky News her “lawyers are ready” to handle any formal questions about allegations she is involved in corruption in Bangladesh.
Asked whether she regrets apparent links with the Bangladeshi Awami League political party, Ms Siddiq said “why don’t you look at my legal letter and see if I have any questions to answer… [the Bangladeshi authorities] have not once contacted me and I’m waiting to hear from them”.
Lawyers acting for Ms Siddiq wrote to the Bangladeshi Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) several weeks ago saying the allegations were “false and vexatious”.
The letter said the ACC must put questions to Ms Siddiq “by no later than 25 March 2025” or “we shall presume that there are no legitimate questions to answer”.
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Staff from the NCA visited Bangladesh as part of initial work to support the interim government in the country.
In a post online today, the former minister said the deadline had expired and the authorities had not replied.
Sky News has approached the Bangladeshi government for comment.
The allegations against Ms Siddiq are focused on links to her aunt Sheikh Hasina – who served as the prime minister of Bangladesh for 20 years.
She is accused of becoming an autocrat, with politically-motivated arrests, extra-judicial killings and other abuses allegedly happening on her watch. Hasina claims it’s all a political witch hunt.
Ms Siddiq was found to have lived in several London properties that had links back to the Awami League political party that her aunt still leads.
She referred herself to the prime minister’s standards adviser Sir Laurie Magnus who said he had “not identified evidence of improprieties” but added it was “regrettable” Ms Siddiq had not been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt.
Ms Siddiq said continuing in her role would be “a distraction” for the government but insisted she had done nothing wrong.