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
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.
Cryptocurrency exchange OKX reportedly hired former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to advise it over the federal probe that resulted in the firm pleading guilty to several violations and agreeing to pay $505 million in fines and penalties.
Cuomo, a New York-registered attorney, advised OKX on legal issues stemming from the probe sometime after August 2021 when he resigned as New York overnor, Bloomberg reported on April 2, citing people familiar with the matter.
“He spoke with company executives regularly and counseled them on how to respond to the criminal investigation,” Bloomberg said.
The Seychelles-based firm pled guilty to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business in violation of US Anti-Money Laundering laws on Feb. 24 and agreed to pay $84 million worth of penalties while forfeiting $421 million worth of fees earned from mostly institutional clients.
The breaches occurred from 2018 to 2024 despite OKX having an official policy preventing US persons from transacting on its crypto exchange since 2017, the Department of Justice noted at the time.
A spokesperson for Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, told Bloomberg that Cuomo has been providing private legal services representing individuals and corporations on a variety of matters since resigning as New York governor.
“He has not represented clients before a New York city or state agency and routinely recommends former colleagues for positions,” Azzopardi added.
OKX reportedly wasn’t willing to comment on its relationships with outside firms.
Cuomo also influenced OKX to make executive appointments: Bloomberg
Cuomo, who is now running for mayor of New York City, also advised OKX to appoint his friend US Attorney Linda Lacewell to OKX’s board of directors, Bloomberg said.
Lacewell, a former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, was added to the board in 2024 and was named OKX’s new chief legal officer on April 1, according to a recent company statement.
After the investigation concluded, OKX said it would seek out a compliance consultant to remedy the issues stemming from the federal probe and bolster its regulatory compliance program.
“Our vision is to make OKX the gold standard of global compliance at scale across different markets and their respective regulatory bodies,”OKX CEO Star Xu said in a Feb. 24 X post.
United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing reciprocal tariffs on trading partners and a 10% baseline tariff on all imports from all countries.
The reciprocal levies on will be approximately half of what trading partners charge for US imports, Trump said. For example, China currently has a tariff of 67% on US imports, so US reciprocal tariffs on Chinese goods will be 34%. Trump also announced a standard 25% tariff on all automobile imports.
Trump told the media that tariffs would return the country to economic prosperity seen in previous centuries:
“From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation. The United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been. So wealthy, in fact, that in the 1880s, they established a commission to decide what they were going to do with the vast sums of money they were collecting.”
“Then, in 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying,” Trump said.
Full breakdown of reciprocal tariffs by country. Source: Cointelegraph
Trump presented the tariffs through the lens of economic protectionism and hinted at returning to the economic policies of the 19th century by using them to replace the income tax.
Trump proposes eliminating federal income tax and replacing it with tariff revenue
Trump proposed the idea of abolishing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and funding the federal government exclusively through trade tariffs while still on the campaign trail in October 2024.
US President Donald Trump addresses the media about reciprocal trade tariffs at the April 2 press event. Source: Fox 4 Dallas
The higher range of the tax savings estimate will only occur if other wage-based taxes are eliminated at the state and municipal levels.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who assumed office in February, also voiced support for replacing the IRS with the “External Revenue Service.”
Lutnick said that the US government cannot balance a budget yet consistently demands more from its citizens every year. Tariffs will also protect American workers and strengthen the US economy, he said.