Rishi Sunak faces prospect of by-election as MP Scott Benton recommended for 35-day suspension
Rishi Sunak is facing another by-election after the Commons standards committee recommended MP Scott Benton be suspended from the chamber for 35 days.
Mr Benton was suspended from the parliamentary Tory party in April after being caught by The Times suggesting he would be willing to break lobbying rules for money.
In its ruling handed down this morning, the committee said “by repeatedly indicating his willingness to disregard the House’s rules, and by giving the impression that many Members of the House had in the past and will in the future engage in such misconduct, Mr Benton committed a very serious breach” of the rules.
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A suspension of more than 10 days – if passed by a vote in the Commons – means that a recall petition is triggered.
This means Mr Benton’s constituents can decide whether they want to hold a by-election.
He was elected as the Tory MP for Blackpool South in 2019, and has a majority of just 3,690. It had been a Labour seat since 1997 – but was Conservative before that.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats have both overturned five-figure majorities in recent by-elections.
The committee highlighted aggravating factors in their decision about Mr Benton – including him providing an “incomplete and incorrect picture of what had transpired”.
They also noted that it was a “repeat offence, or indication that the offence was part of a pattern of behaviour”.
‘Toxic message about standards in parliament’
“Mr Benton’s comments about his past willingness to collude with companies in making false valuations of hospitality suggest that this could have been a pattern of conduct on his part,” they added.
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The committee categorised what the former Tory MP did as an “extremely serious breach”.
The report added: “The message he gave to his interlocutors at the 7 March meeting was that he was corrupt and ‘for sale’, and that so were many other members of the House. He communicated a toxic message about standards in parliament.”
The 35-day suspension is one of the longest ever recommended by the committee – although Boris Johnson would have been recommended for a 90-day period if he had not resigned from the Commons first for misleading parliament over the Partygate scandal.
Mr Benton met undercover reporters from The Times who were posing as employees of a fake lobbying company.
The chair of the all-party parliamentary group for betting and gaming suggested he would be happy to be paid between £2,000 and £4,000 a month to help the fake company – complete with a logo, website and office addresses in London and Chennai in India.
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There are strict rules that prevent MPs from carrying out paid lobbying or advising how to influence parliament.
Mr Benton ultimately did not accept any financial payment arising from the meeting.
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The Royal Navy will get 25 new warships – and could get three more – as the government indicates where its planned rise in defence spending will go.
Defence Secretary Grant Shapps told Sky News there are 28 new ships and submarines in the design or construction stage at the moment for the UK’s armed forces.
He said 22 ships are “already in the system” – but there is less clarity over six new warships he announced for the Royal Marines today.
The defence secretary said that the government is committing to three of the new “versatile” ships for the Marines, “and then possibly another three as well”. He later said the final three are “in the design phase”.
He also announced two of the ships being built – type 26 and 31 frigates – will be equipped with land-attack missiles so they will be capable of attacking targets on shore.
Mr Shapps said this is a “very, very large shipbuilding programme, a lot of warships, the golden era of shipbuilding here”.
He added: “It’s all possible because just last month we agreed as a government to spend 2.5% of our GDP on our defence sector because we think it’s very, very important to make sure that those who would seek to do us harm are put off, that they are dissuaded because they can see that we’re serious about our defence.”
Labour has pledged to reach 2.5% of GDP on defence spending when economic conditions allow it, while the Conservatives have said they would reach that number by 2030.
But defence spending fell in the early years of the Conservative government, which has been in power for 14 years, and spending was not boosted when Ukraine was invaded in 2014 or 2022.
Mr Shapps accused Labour’s defence plan of posing a danger to security
Mr Shapps said the Tory pledge is different to Labour’s because the Conservatives have “set out a timeline”.
“We’ve also said how we would go about largely funding this, and that’s by reducing the size of the civil service, which is much bigger than it was before COVID,” he said.
“We want to get it back down to the size it was before and use that money to spend on defence.
“I have to say, as defence secretary, with everything that I know in this role, that I think that the Labour position presents a danger to this country because it will send a signal to our adversaries that we’re not serious about our defence if we won’t set out that timetable.”
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Labour’s shadow work and pensions minister Alison McGovern said she is “sceptical” about the Conservatives’ claim about how they will fund the spending rise.
She said Labour has had to pledge the rise for when the economy allows “because of what the Conservative Party have done to our economy” – as she accused Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak of implementing “big unfunded tax cuts”.
Ms McGovern added: “I think everybody would expect Rachel Reeves as the shadow chancellor to say, well, we will make our plans when we’ve got access to all of the books, all of the details of Ministry of Defence spending.”
Mr Shapps said the government did not spend as much on defence previously because countries such as China, North Korea, Iran and Russia were not such a threat.
The defence secretary added: “We were living in very, very different times.”
He said the government has also added £24bn to the defence budget over the past couple of years and the UK is “by a country mile the largest spender on defence in Europe, with the second largest in NATO after only the US”.
HMS Bulwark will not be scrapped before its end of service date. Pic: PA
Discussing the UK’s current fleet, Mr Shapps said sister ships HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark are due to come out of service in 2033-2034 but the defence secretary said they will not be scrapped before that.
Albion and Bulwark are currently used as the Royal Navy’s landing platform docks to transport the Royal Marines.
Mr Shapps also announced HMS Argyll and HMS Westminster, two frigates with a combined service of 63 years, are to be retired, with HMS Argyll sold to BAE Systems to be used to support apprentice shipbuilder training.
The new ships being built include Type 26 and Type 31 frigates in Scotland, Astute and Dreadnought submarines in Barrow-in-Furness, and Fleet Solid Support ships in Belfast and Devon.
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