Boris Johnson has admitted for the first time that former Tory MP Owen Paterson broke the rules on MPs’ conduct by lobbying on behalf of companies paying him £100,000 a year.
Under intensive questioning from a committee of senior MPs, the prime minister admitted it had been a “total mistake” for him to put forward changes to standards rules which might have got the former cabinet minister off the hook.
“Do I regret that decision? I certainly do,” he told the Commons Liaison Committee.
Mr Johnson’s admission comes 14 days after he whipped Tory MPs to vote to overrule Westminster’s standards system and give Mr Paterson the chance of an appeal against a 30-day suspension recommended by a report from the House of Commons Standards Committee.
The prime minister told MPs that his motivation for trying to assist Mr Paterson was sympathy following the suicide of the long-serving MP’s wife Rose.
“I think it was a very sad case, but I think there was no question he had fallen foul of the rules on paid advocacy, as far as I could see from the report,” said Mr Johnson.
He said that he wanted to see if there was cross-party support for a change in the rules to allow the Shropshire North MP “a fair right of appeal”.
But told by Standards Committee chair Chris Bryant that the Shropshire North MP’s appeal was heard “endlessly” by the panel of cross-party MPs and lay members before the publication of its report, he admitted: “In forming the impression that the former member for North Shropshire had not had a fair process I may well have been mistaken.”
And when Mr Bryant pointed out that the PM had made no effort to build cross-party support for his plans before ordering Tory MPs to vote them through, he responded sheepishly: “So it would seem.”
Labour MP Yvette Cooper challenged Mr Johnson over his comment that Paterson had “fallen foul of the commissioner on standards”.
“This is an area where we really need clarity, given your important role, and you used a slightly odd form of words,” said Ms Cooper.
“Do you believe Owen Paterson broke the rules? Yes or no?
“Do you recognise that, given your responsibility for upholding the ministerial code, for upholding the rules, for upholding standards, it is really important that you should not give any impression, when there is an independent report that finds 14 occasions of paid lobbying, that you think that is OK?”
Mr Johnson said he accepted that, adding: “In retrospect, it might have helped a bit if I had said that I believed that Owen had broken the rules as far as I could see.”
But Ms Cooper interrupted: “We have an independent process that has looked into this. Every time you say ‘as far as I could see’ and you qualify it, you are undermining the independent system that all of us need to work.
“You need to have some integrity and to uphold the standards.”
Mr Johnson’s attempt to defend Paterson “creates an impression which is very unfortunate and very damaging to public life”, she said, asking: “Do you accept you have a responsibility… to establish much higher standards?”
“I do,” replied the PM.”Yes, I think it was a total mistake not to see that Owen’s breach of the rules made any discussion about anything else impossible. I totally accept that.”
