Boris Johnson news – live: Theresa May condemns PM’s sleaze handling as ‘ill-judged and plain wrong’

MPs officially approve the motion to scrap the controversial standards reforms that sparked Westminster’s sleaze row without the need for a formal vote.

Shouts of “ayes” in the chamber were enough to ensure it was approved.

The motion rescinds the so-called Leadsom amendment, which looked to establish a review of the MPs’ standards investigation process and delay Owen Paterson’s suspension for breaking lobbying rules.

It also endorses the report which would have suspended former Conservative minister Paterson from parliament for 30 days if he had remained an MP.

Sir Lindsay Hoyle stresses Paterson is no longer a member of the House, so this is not relevant.

The debate is over.

Chris Bryant, chair of the standards committee, is the last MP to contribute to the debate. He starts by saying he doesn’t understand why Boris Johnson tried to block the report into Owen Paterson.

The evidence against Paterson was “stark and compelling”, he says, adding the government has made a series of errors, even up to last night, when it tried to pass the report without a debate.

Bryant acknowledges there is room for improvement in the standards committee’s appeal process, and that this is being looked into.

He also says the committee will soon publish a report on how the standards system could be changed. It will come before Christmas and he urges people to read it when it comes out.

Now it’s time for MPs to give the motion their approval.

Here’s the clip of Sir Christopher Chope suggesting his female colleague, Alicia Kearns, has “not applied her mind” to what he is saying.

Labour’s Jess Phillips is up now, and she begins by saying Chope’s remark he made about Kearns not applying her mind to the debate (see my last post) was “unacceptable”. She adds that, as a woman, she has found some of his remarks problematic in the past too.

However, Phillips goes on to defend Chope’s point about the need for a fresh debate, pointing to the fact the government’s own potentially corrupt point of view is on the line.

She says she finds the references by Owen Paterson’s friends to “natural justice” difficult. She says this is a term always used by people who do not like what happens to them. She says Paterson was given every opportunity to defend himself. And he had much better legal support than other MPs, or people facing legal proceedings outside the Commons.

Phillips also suggests Andrea Leadsom, former leader of the Commons, was exploited by her colleagues in the controversy. It was Leadsom who tabled the amendment to Commons standards rules.

Tory MP Sir Christopher Chope, who last night blocked an attempt to push through a reversal on the original Owen Paterson vote without debate, says rescinding a motion “passed less than two weeks ago is a major constitutional decision”.

Hence why he blocked it, he says, claiming MPs have largely welcomed the chance to have a debate.

Alicia Kearns , a fellow Tory MP, intervenes to say politicians have already spent “four and a half hours” debating this issue. She asks her colleague “how much is enough?” and insists MPs need to get back to work for their constituents.

Chope responds, saying Kearns has not “applied her mind” to the point he is making, which she is visibly insulted by.

He says again “we can’t pass motions and then rescind them without proper debate”.

Wendy Chamberlain, the Lib Dem chief whip, says the government has not issued a proper apology, or given an explanation, for why it attempted to rip up the Commons standards rules.

She says ministers have expressed regret. But children often express regret when they are caught doing something wrong.

“That is not the same as apologising,” she tells MPs.

Another clearly angered MP is up now, the SNP’s Pete Wishart. He immediately labels the Paterson and standards drama “an utter disaster”.

He asks why Rees-Mogg has not apologised and says if the Commons leader had even “a smidgen of self-repect”, he would have resigned by now.

Wishart says the government wanted to set up a “kangaroo court committee of corruption” to review the Paterson case, chaired by a Conservative MP.

He says there is a new generation of Tory MPs. “Some of them are even quite good,” he says. He tells them they are being let down by their older colleagues, like Rees-Mogg, who have been responsible for this affair.

Rees-Mogg has “opened a Pandora’s Box of Tory sleaze”, he says.

Former Tory PM Theresa May is speaking now, and she is clearly unhappy with what’s happened in Westminster over the last few weeks.

She says no MP in the Chamber should, or will, vote against the motion today.

Passing it will be “a step in the right direction, but it will not undo the damage that has been done by the vote of 3 November,” she goes on, adding the issue is “not a party political” one.

May tells MPs she read the original Owen Paterson report, by the standards committee, and that its conclusion was “clear and fair”. Paterson clearly broke the rules, she says.

She adds the vote to ignore that report was “misplaced, ill-judged and just plain wrong”.

“Where to start?” Thangam Debbonaire says, before pointing out the irony in Jacob Rees-Mogg complaining about two issues being conflated in the original debate.

“But it was [Rees-Mogg] himself who conflated those issues,” she insists, because he was backing the amendment in which they were tied together.

She says it has been chaotic, adding: “To anyone who really loves democracy, standards are the bedrock of everything we do everything.”

Finishing up, Debbonaire says parliament “should only ever be in the business of strengthening and updating our system” and suggests this U-turn by the government is evidence of the opposite taking place.

The standards reform debate has now begun in the Commons, with shadow Commons leader Thangam Debbonaire going after her Tory counterpart for his part in the ongoing sleaze row.