Owen Paterson: Who is the Tory MP who’s quit after lobbying uproar?
Owen Paterson has resigned as MP for North Shropshire after the government performed a U-turn over the controversial blocking of his 30-day Commons suspension for breaching lobbying rules.
Mr Paterson has served as a Conservative MP since 1997, and although departing the Commons from the backbenches, was previously a cabinet minister.
Growing up on his family’s farm in Shropshire, Mr Paterson went on to study history at Cambridge University before joining the National Leathersellers College and joining his family business – British Leather Company.
Mr Paterson met then-secretary of state Hilary Clinton when he was Northern Ireland secretary
Before going into politics, the now 65-year-old was president of COTANCE (the Confederation of National Associations of Tanners and Dressers of the European Community).
After an unsuccessful attempt at securing the seat of Wrexham in 1992, he was elected as Conservative MP for North Shropshire five years later with a majority of 2,195.
Mr Paterson increased his majority at every election thereafter, up to 22,949 in the latest 2019 election.
The North Shropshire MP served in the cabinet during the Tory-Lib Dem coalition years – as Northern Ireland secretary from 2010 to 2012, and environment secretary from 2012 to 2014.
As Northern Ireland secretary, Mr Paterson oversaw the publication and delivery of the Saville Report on the events of Bloody Sunday in January 1972, which led to an apology by then-prime minister David Cameron.
He was also the first cabinet member to publicly oppose the coalition government’s Marriage (Same Sec Couples) Bill, defying both Mr Cameron and ministerial convention.
Owen Paterson with PM David Cameron in 2010 and (below) deputy PM Nick Clegg
In 2014, Mr Paterson was dismissed as environment secretary by Mr Cameron as part of his 2014 reshuffle. He was replaced with Liz Truss, who is now foreign secretary.
In an interview in 2013 about the alleged failure of a badger cull he had been responsible for, Mr Paterson said “the badgers have moved the goalposts”.
Mr Paterson voted and spoke strongly against the fox hunting ban.
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Paterson: ‘I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again’
He has also previously been accused of being a climate change sceptic, having formerly described wind turbines as “ridiculous” and “useless”. He has also supported fracking.
From the backbenches, the North Shropshire MP became a leading supporter of the campaign to leave the European Union and was an outspoken member of the European Research Group (ERG) of Eurosceptic Tory MPs.
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‘Shame’: MPs vote against suspension of ex-minister
In 2015, Mr Paterson and fellow Conservative Brexiteer John Redwood founded the internal pressure group Conservatives for Britain, and formed the backbone of the party’s Leave campaign.
He has also served on many committees during his time as a parliamentarian, including the Welsh Affairs Committee, the European Standing Committee, and the Agriculture Committee.
On 24 June 2020, Mr Paterson’s wife Rose Paterson – who was Aintree’s chairman – took her own life on his birthday.
Mr Paterson, pictured with his late wife Rose
Last month, following a two-year investigation, the parliamentary commissioner for standards found that Mr Paterson had breached the rule prohibiting paid advocacy by making multiple approaches to government departments and ministers for two companies.
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 commissioner recommended that he should be suspended from the Commons for a month.
The allegations related to his conduct between October 2016 and February 2020.
Mr Paterson was paid more than £110,000 per year to act as a consultant for the two separate companies.
Mr Paterson maintains his innocence after the standards body found he ‘repeatedly’ breached lobbying rules
On Wednesday, Conservative MPs – with the encouragement of Prime Minister Boris Johnson – passed a motion in favour of ignoring Mr Paterson’s month-long Commons suspension.
As part of the backlash, the government was accused of “corruption” in seeking to overhaul parliament’s standards rules in an alleged effort to protect the Tory MP.
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Govt signals sleaze watchdog U-turn
In the face of a huge outcry, the government performed a U-turn in the row on Thursday with the promise of a new vote on Mr Paterson’s suspension.
But, just hours later, the 65-year-old announced his intention to resign from the House of Commons.
Mr Paterson has three children, and in his resignation statement posted on social media, said he had made the decision to stand down from his role after “consultation with my family”.
Politics
Specialist teams and online investigators deployed across England and Wales to tackle ‘national emergency’ of violence against women and girls
Specialist investigation teams for rape and sexual offences are to be created across England and Wales as the home secretary declares violence against women and girls a “national emergency”.
Shabana Mahmood said the dedicated units will be in place across every force by 2029 as part of Labour’s violence against women and girls (VAWG) strategy due to be launched later this week.
The use of Domestic Abuse Protection Orders (DAPOs), which had been trialled in several areas, will also be rolled out across England and Wales. They are designed to target abusers by imposing curfews, electronic tags and exclusion zones.
The orders cover all forms of domestic abuse, including economic abuse, coercive and controlling behaviour, stalking and ‘honour’-based abuse. Breaching the terms can carry a prison term of up to five years.
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Govt ‘thinking again’ on abuse strategy
Nearly £2m will also be spent funding a network of officers to target offenders operating within the online space.
Teams will use covert and intelligence techniques to tackle violence against women and girls via apps and websites.
A similar undercover network funded by the Home Office to examine child sexual abuse has arrested over 1,700 perpetrators.
Abuse is ‘national emergency’
Ms Mahmood said in a statement: “This government has declared violence against women and girls a national emergency.
“For too long, these crimes have been considered a fact of life. That’s not good enough. We will halve it in a decade.
“Today, we announce a range of measures to bear down on abusers, stopping them in their tracks. Rapists, sex offenders and abusers will have nowhere to hide.”
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Angiolini Inquiry: Recommendations are ‘not difficult’
The target to halve violence against women and girls in a decade is a Labour manifesto pledge.
The government said the measures build on existing policy, including facial recognition technology to identify offenders, improving protections for stalking victims, making strangulation a criminal offence and establishing domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms.
Read more from Sky News:
Demands for violence and abuse reforms
Women still feel unsafe on streets
Minister ‘clarifies’ violence strategy
Labour has ‘failed women’
But the Conservatives said Labour had “failed women” and “broken its promises” by delaying the publication of the violence against women and girls strategy.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said that Labour “shrinks from uncomfortable truths, voting against tougher sentences and presiding over falling sex-offender convictions. At every turn, Labour has failed women”.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will be on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips on Sky News this morning from 8.30am.
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published a crypto wallet and custody guide investor bulletin on Friday, outlining best practices and common risks of different forms of crypto storage for the investing public.
The SEC’s bulletin lists the benefits and risks of different methods of crypto custody, including self-custody versus allowing a third-party to hold digital assets on behalf of the investor.
If investors choose third-party custody, they should understand the custodian’s policies, including whether it “rehypothecates” the assets held in custody by lending them out or if the service provider is commingling client assets in a single pool instead of holding the crypto in segregated customer accounts.
Crypto wallet types were also outlined in the SEC guide, which broke down the pros and cons of hot wallets, which are connected to the internet, and offline storage in cold wallets.
Hot wallets carry the risk of hacking and other cybersecurity threats, according to the SEC, while cold wallets carry the risk of permanent loss if the offline storage fails, a storage device is stolen, or the private keys are compromised.
The SEC’s crypto custody guide highlights the sweeping regulatory change at the agency, which was hostile to digital assets and the crypto industry under former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler’s leadership.
Related: SEC sends warning letters to ETF issuers targeting untamed leverage
The crypto community celebrates the SEC guide as a transformational change in the agency
“The same agency that spent years trying to kill the industry is now teaching people how to use it,” Truth For the Commoner (TFTC) said in response to the SEC’s crypto custody guide.
The SEC is providing “huge value” to crypto investors by educating prospective crypto holders about custody and best practices, according to Jake Claver, the CEO of Digital Ascension Group, a company that provides services to family offices.
SEC regulators published the guide one day after SEC Chair Paul Atkins said that the legacy financial system is moving onchain.
On Thursday, the SEC gave the green light to the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), a clearing and settlement company, to begin tokenizing financial assets, including equities, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and government debt securities.
Magazine: Unstablecoins: Depegging, bank runs and other risks loom
Greens leader Zack Polanski has rejected claims his party would push for open borders on immigration, telling Sky News it is “not a pragmatic” solution for a world in “turmoil”.
Mr Polanski distanced himself from his party’s “long-range vision” for open borders, saying it was not in his party’s manifesto and was an “attack line used by opponents” to question his credibility.
It came as Mr Polanski, who has overseen a spike in support in the polls to double figures, refused to apologise over controversial comments he made about care workers on BBC Question Time that were criticised across the political spectrum.
Mr Polanski was speaking to Sky News earlier this week while in Calais, where he joined volunteers and charities to witness how French police handle the arrival of migrants in the town that is used as a departure point for those wanting to make the journey to the UK.
He told Sky News he had made the journey to the French town – once home to the “Jungle” refugee camp before it was demolished in 2016 – to tackle “misinformation” about migration and to make the case for a “compassionate, fair and managed response” to the small boats crisis.
He said that “no manifesto ever said anything about open borders” and that the Greens had never stood at a general election advocating for them.
“Clearly when the world is in political turmoil and we have deep inequality, that is not a situation we can move to right now,” he said.
“That would also involve massive international agreements and cooperation. That clearly is not a pragmatic conversation to have right now. And very often the government try to push that attack line to make us look not pragmatic.”
The party’s manifesto last year did not mention open borders, but it did call for an end to the “hostile environment”, more safe and legal routes and for the Home Office to be abolished and replaced with a department of migration.
Asked why the policy of minimal restrictions on migration had been attributed to his party, Mr Polanski said open borders was part of a “long-range vision of what society could look like if there was a Green government and if we’d had a long time to fix some of the systemic problems”.
‘We should recognise the contribution migrants make’
Mr Polanski, who was elected Green Party leader in September and has been compared to Nigel Farage over his populist economic policies, said his position was one of a “fair and managed” migration system – although he did not specify whether that included a cap on numbers.
He acknowledged that there needed to be a “separate conversation” about economic migration but that he did not believe any person who boarded a small boat was in a “good situation”.
While Mr Polanski stressed that he believed asylum seekers should be able to work in Britain and pay taxes, he also said he believed in the need to train British workers in sectors such as care, where one in five are foreign nationals.
Asked what his proposals for a fair and managed migration system looked like, and whether he supported a cap on numbers, Mr Polanski said: “We have 100,000 vacancies in the National Health Service. One in five care workers in the care sector are foreign nationals.
Zack Polanski speaks to Sky News from a warehouse in Calais where charities and organisations provide migrants with essentials.
“Now, of course, that is both British workers and we should be training British workers, but we should recognise the contribution that migrants and people who come over here make.”
I’m not going to apologise’
Mr Polanski also responded to the criticism he attracted over his comments about care workers on Question Time last week, where he told the audience: “I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly want to wipe someone’s bum” – before adding: “I’m very grateful for the people who do this work.”
His comments have been criticised by a number of Labour MPs, including Wes Streeting, the health secretary, who said: “Social care isn’t just ‘wiping someone’s bum’. It is a hard, rewarding, skilled professional job.
“This is immigration as exploitation.”
Read more:
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Asked whether he could understand why some care workers might feel he had talked down to them, the Greens leader replied: “I care deeply about care workers. When I made those comments, it’s important to give a full context. I said ‘I’m very grateful to people who do this important work’ and absolutely repeat that it’s vital work.”
“Of course, it is not part of the whole job, and I never pretended it was part of the whole job.”
Mr Polanski said he “totally” rejected the suggestion that he had denigrated the role of care workers in the eyes of the public and said his remarks were made in the context of a “hostile Question Time” where he had “three right-wing panellists shouting at me”.
Pressed on whether he wanted to apologise, he replied: “I’m not going to apologise for being really clear that I’m really grateful to the people who do this really vital work. And yes, we should be paying them properly, too.”
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