Markus Andrews

Prime minister Boris Johnson has refused to apologise for his botched attempt to neuter parliament’s independent standards system, as he dodged a House of Commons debate on sleaze.The PM was accused of “running scared” of the controversy after he paid a visit to a hospital in the north-east rather than attend the three-hour emergency debate.In a TV interview during his visit to Hexham General Hospital in Northumberland, the PM three times declined the opportunity to offer the apology demanded by Labour.And he also refused to comment on new research suggesting that peerages are being granted to all wealthy Conservative donors who take on a temporary role as the party treasurer and increase their donations beyond £3 million.Mr Johnson said that his long-standing appointment made it impossible for him to attend the emergency debate in the Commons, where the government will instead be represented by chancellor of Duchy of Lancaster Stephen Barclay.But Sir Keir Starmer – who will lead the debate for Labour – said: “Boris Johnson does not have the decency either to defend or apologise for his actions. “Rather than repairing the damage he has done, the prime minister is running scared.“When required lead, he has chosen to hide. His concern, as always, is self-preservation not the national interest.”Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle played down reports that he would be announcing his own review of the House’s standards procedures, telling Sky News that he wanted to hear MPs’ comments in today’s debate and consider an upcoming report from the standards committee before deciding on a way ahead.Labour are demanding that the prime minister apologise for attempting last week to neuter the Commons standards system in order to get his friend and former minister Owen Paterson off the hook after he was found guilty of lobbying for companies paying him more than £100,000 a year.The Speaker described the events around the Paterson case as a “very dark week for politics” and said it was important to “get this House to a much better place than where we left it last week.”He said he would consult with standards committee chair Chris Bryant, saying: “We’ve got to move this House forward to where the public have trust and faith in the politicians. This House has to be, quite rightly, not tarnished.”Mr Johnson said that “frankly, I don’t think there’s much more to be said” about the Paterson case, which led to the Commons standards committee recommending a 30-day suspension for an “egregious case of paid advocacy”.The PM ordered Tory MPs under a three-line whip to support a plan last week to help Paterson avoid the punishment, but was forced into a humiliating climbdown after opposition parties boycotted his proposed Conservative-dominated committee to rewrite sleaze rules.Downing Street has indicated there are “no plans” for the former MP – who quit the Commons last week after Mr Johnson’s U-turn – to be given a peerage.But asked if he could rule out sending Mr Paterson to the House of Lords, the PM would say only: “There’s been absolutely no discussion about that.”Mr Johnson’s official spokesperson said that the prime minister’s trip to Northumberland has been in his diary since before today’s sleaze debate was announced last Thursday.The PM travelled to the north-east by train and will return this afternoon by the same mode of transport, making it impossible for him to reach Westminster for the start of the debate at 4.30pm.But he faced accusations of trying to dodge scrutiny – particularly after he used a private jet to return from Glasgow to London last week to attend a dinner in a male-only club.No 10 insisted that Mr Barclay was “the right person” to lead for the government in the three-hour debate because of his cross-Whitehall responsibilities.Asked whether the PM agreed with environment secretary George Eustice that the standards row was a “storm in a teacup”, Mr Johnson’s spokesman said: “We fully recognise the strong feeling on all sides of the House on this.“We supported the principle of a right to appeal to make the system fairer and the importance of that to be done on a cross-party basis, and we recognised that wasn’t possible.”Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle confirmed he will make a statement ahead of the emergency debate on standards on Monday.Sir Lindsay said: “Last week did not show our democracy in the best light.“I hope today’s debate will give members the chance to express their views and help us move forward.“I also hope MPs will consider their language to get the right message across.”The PM’s official spokesman was asked why Mr Johnson could not fly back to London as he did from the Cop26 summit last week.The spokesman said: “I gave you the reason for that flight before.”He added: “We think the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, whose department is the lead on this area, is the right person to lead (the debate).” More

The UK again finds itself in a tense standoff with the EU after Boris Johnson’s government hinted it could trigger Article 16 and suspend parts of the Brexit agreement’s Northern Ireland Protocol.Britain’s negotiator Lord David Frost emerged from a meeting with European Commission vice president Maros Sefcovic in Brussels on Friday saying advances towards new trading rules for Northern Ireland had been “limited”.He suggested that a drastic move to scrap the protocol, agreed in 2019 by Mr Johnson and Lord Frost to ease the passage of goods between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland without the creation of a hard border, was “very much on the table and has been since July”.He added that “significant gaps” remained between the two sides and warned that “time is running out on these talks if we are to make progress”.The protocol relaxes customs checks between the UK and EU nations in the interest of preserving the peace secured by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, after decades of sectarian violence during the Troubles, but its conditions mean Northern Ireland must comply with the rules of the European single market, meaning bureaucracy and possible delays on goods arriving from England, Scotland and Wales.That is a reality Westminster is keen to sidestep, hence its suggestion of a “new legal text” to replace the current deal and streamline the process.Article 16 meanwhile permits either the UK or the EU to unilaterally suspend elements of the protocol if it is shown to be causing serious “economic, societal or environmental difficulties” and resulting in trade disruption.While the two sides did agree to a reduction in paperwork at the border in mid-October, the European Court of Justice’s continuing oversight role remains a point of contention, with the British government keen to remove it, complaining that the Luxembourg court’s influence amounts to an unjustified infringement of UK sovereignty.For his part, Mr Sefcovic says the UK has failed to engage with significant proposals put forward by the EU to make life easier for businesses moving goods between Northern Ireland and the British mainland.He insisted the EU had “spared no effort” in drawing up its package to cut back customs-related red tape and do away with 80 per cent of sanitary checks on animal products.“This was a big move by us but until today we have seen no move at all from the UK side,” he said.“I find this disappointing and, once again, I urge the UK government to engage with us sincerely.“From this perspective I see next week as an important one. We should focus all efforts on reaching a solution as soon as possible. Our aim should be to establish stability and predictability for Northern Ireland.”On the question of Article 16 specifically, Mr Sefcovic was bullish, saying triggering it “would have serious consequences – serious for Northern Ireland as it would lead to instability and unpredictability, and serious also for EU-UK relations in general as it would mean a rejection of EU efforts to find a consensual solution to the implementation of the protocol”.While Britain’s Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, insisted that the triggering of Article 16 was “not inevitable” and remained an “absolute last resort”, the row escalated on Sunday when Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney told RTE that the Trade and Cooperation Agreement signed by the UK and EU under the Withdrawal Agreement was itself “contingent” on the Northern Ireland Protocol – and therefore in jeopardy.“One is contingent on the other. So if one is being set aside, there is a danger that the other will also be set aside by the EU,” he said.Belgium’s deputy prime minister, Vincent Van Peteghem, drew similar conclusions in conversation with Bloomberg TV over the weekend.If the UK does trigger Article 16, the “serious” EU response alluded to would effectively plunge Britain back into no-deal Brexit territory, which would mean new tariffs for its businesses and even worse terms than they currently operate under now outside the single market.Also hugely critical of Mr Johnson’s government for flirting with tearing up the Northern Ireland Protocol was Sir John Major, his predecessor as Conservative prime minister between 1990 and 1997, who said going through with it would be “colosally stupid” during a lengthy interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today progamme on Saturday morning in which he also condemned the ongoing “Tory sleaze” row currently engulfing the party.“This protocol is being denounced week after week by Lord Frost and the prime minister,” Sir John said. “Who negotiated the wretched protocol? Lord Frost and the prime minister. They negotiated it, they signed it, they now wish to break it.“At the moment, we are negotiating over the protocol with all the subtlety of a brick,” he added.“What is happening week after week is that Lord Frost goes into the negotiations, he gives away nothing, he takes something from the European Union, he goes away, blames them for the fact that nothing at all has happened.“This is a very difficult and dangerous road to go down. It’s not just a question of trade difficulties. It could, we’ve seen what’s happened in Northern Ireland before, it could become much worse. They should be very, very careful about this.“This is silly politics to placate a few extreme Brexiteers, and the price will be paid by businesses, people in Northern Ireland and the reputation of the United Kingdom.”Opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer was likewise scathing, telling the BBC’s Andrew Marr on Sunday that Mr Johnson was “constantly trying to pick a fight on things like this so he hopes people don’t look elsewhere in the forest, which are things like the Owen Paterson affair”.The Labour leader also stated his objection to interfering with the protocol, saying: “That isn’t in the interests of the communities in Northern Ireland or businesses in Northern Ireland. What is in their interests is resolving the issues.”Speculation nevertheless remains rife that Mr Johnson intends to press ahead with Article 16 following the conclusion of this week’s Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, when the eyes of the world are no longer trained on Britain. More

Former attorney general Sir Geoffrey Cox is being paid £400,000 a year on top of his MPs’ salary.The contract with international legal services firm Consultant Global Counsel began on 1 November and commits the Torridge and West Devon MP to up to 41 hours of work a month.A prominent commercial barrister and QC, Cox has been renowned as parliament’s highest-earning MP since entering the House of Commons in 2005.He took a big pay cut when he gave up private practice to serve as attorney general from 2018-2020.But since being sacked as the government’s senior legal officer by Boris Johnson in a reshuffle in February last year he has returned to the courtroom, registering more than £570,000 in earnings last year.According to Hansard, since leaving the frontbench, he has spoken in the Commons only once, in a debate on fixed-term parliaments in September 2021.His entry in the Commons Register of MPs’ Interests states that 13.5 per cent of his earnings from the bar go to his chambers to cover their costs.Asked whether it was acceptable for an MP to devote so much time to a second job, Boris Johnson’s official spokesperson said: “It’s for individual MPs to set out transparently what additional work they’ve been taking on outside government and outside parliament.“MPs are elected by their constituencies. It’s for the public at elections to decide how well individual MPs have performed.”The spokesperson added: “We would expect all MPs to abide by the rules and declare their interests in the right and proper way.”It was “a matter for the House” to decide the rules on second jobs, said the spokesperson. More

Ed Davey’s outside work as a consultant is a potential “conflict of interest” a Liberal Democrat MP has acknowledged, ahead of a Commons debate on sleaze.The Lib Dem leader earns an extra £78,000 a year, on top of his £81,932 salary as an MP, advising an international law firm and an energy firm – for working just 10 hours a month.Sir Ed is one of only 2 non-Conservatives among around 30 MPs with second jobs as consultants, a role thrown into the spotlight by the Owen Paterson scandal.The money is used to “benefit my disabled son”, he has declared in the Commons register of financial interests, through a company called Energy Destinations Ltd run by his wife Emily.Wendy Chamberlain, the Lib Dem MP who has triggered the emergency sleaze debate, declined to say whether the party believed there should be a ban on such second jobs.But she said: “I think we have to look at what the rules are now and I think we always have to look to be changing things.”And she told BBC Radio 4: “There are definitely conflicts of interest that need to be considered and we have seen that.“If that’s going to be appropriate that second jobs of any kind or description are done away with, that will be what the rules will be.”There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing, because MPs are allowed to be consultants – provided they do not actively lobby for companies, as Mr Paterson did.A Lib Dem spokesman said: “Ed Davey has always been clear that any additional income he earns is to ensure there are funds available for his severely disabled son, who requires 24/7 support.“The work Ed does is fully declared. transparent and within the rules. It involves providing expert advice on tackling the climate crisis.”The Commons standards committee is considering whether to bar MPs from topping up their earnings as advisers, in a report to be published by Christmas.The Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, is also considering a proposal to bar MPs from controversial outside interests – perhaps in return for MPs found guilty of breaking the rules having the right to appeal to a judgeThe highest earners are all Tory former cabinet ministers. including Andrew Mitchell (£182,600 a year) and Julian Smith (£144,000), Chris Grayling (£100,000).Sir Ed declares that he earns £60,000 a year for 72 hours work as a consultant on political issues and policy analysis to the law firm Herbert Smith Freehills.He is also a member of the advisory board of Next Energy Capital, an investment and asset manager in solar power, earning a further £18,000 a year for working 48 hours.It is highly unusual – possibly unprecedented – for the leader of a political party to top up their parliamentary earnings through such work. More

The Metropolitan Police are being urged to launch a “cash for honours” investigation into the award of Conservative peerages to individuals who have donated millions to the party’s coffers.It follows reports in The Sunday Times that 15 of the last 16 Tory party treasurers have been offered a seat in the House of Lords having each donated more than £3 million to the party.The issue is likely to be highlighted in the Commons on Monday as MPs prepare to debate an emergency motion on sleaze and standards in the wake of the lobbying scandal involving the former Tory cabinet minister Owen Paterson.Pete Wishart, the SNP MP, said: “The Metropolitan Police should launch a fresh cash for honours investigation to determine whether a criminal offence has been committed”.“It is utterly appalling that so many millionaire Tory party donors have been life peerages by Boris Johnson and his predecessors”.The Conservative Party, however, has denied any link between donations and peerage nominations, and speaking on Sky News, the international trade secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan suggested it was key to have a “rich mix” in the upper chamber.Ahead of the emergency debate on Monday, the cabinet minister said “many business people, who have donated to their parties – Lord Sugar is one for the Labour Party, we have some on our side – do so because they believe in political activity”.She insisted: “I don’t think that someone who happens to have been an extremely good businessman and has made a great deal of money through business activity – usually also an enormous amount of philanthropy as well, those are the sorts of people who are across our country, amazing people of all political colours – that they should be barred from going to the House of Lords because they have made a lot of money, employed many, many thousands of people, run incredible businesses at their own risk, that that is somehow is a bar. That’s not the case.“Those who choose to put themselves forward in political environments, as well as their business and philanthropic ones, will go through the process just like anyone else, and we want a rich mix in the House of Lords of voices with experience of all the sectors of our country”.Labour has not called for a police investigation, but commenting on the minister’s remarks, deputy leader Angela Rayner said: “A cabinet minister tried to justify the cash for peerages scandal and the Conservatives putting party donations in the House of Lords when they donate £3 million because they want a ‘rich mix’ of people in the House of Lords. Rich been the important word there, of course.” More

A government move to stop water companies from dumping raw sewage into Britain’s rivers and the sea does not go far enough, campaigners and peers are warning.MPs will later on Monday vote for an amendment that calls on firms to make a “progressive reduction” in the amount of sewage they pump into the country’s waterways.Environment minister Rebecca Pow is due to meet with bosses to make it “crystal clear” that the government is “absolutely committed to cutting harmful sewage entering our precious watercourses”.Critics argue that the proposals aren’t coming quickly enough and are adequate because they do not stipulate measurements or metrics for the reduction required by water companies.Jo Maugham, director of the Good Law Project, called the amendment a “political ruse” that places a “meaningless” duty on firms.The Duke of Wellington’s amendment to the Environment Bill would place a new legal duty on water companies to “take all reasonable steps” to prevent sewage discharges.The independent crossbencher’s proposal was approved by the Lords last month by 213 votes to 60, majority 153.This meant the Bill was sent back to the Commons for further consideration and enabled the government to table its alternative concession – described as a U-turn by Labour – following a fierce public backlash.Environmental activist and former Undertones singer Feargal Sharkey has led a social media campaign to push for tougher laws on the issue, with his allies putting pressure on their MPs.A total of 22 Conservative MPs rebelled last month to support the Duke of Wellington’s initial proposal.But Green Party peer Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb said the government concession was “not good enough” as it failed to stipulate measurements or metrics for the reduction required by water companies.She said: “The government is running scared of the water companies and their owners when what they should be doing is thinking about the health of people and the environment.”Lady Jones added: “It’s a typical government fudge to make their MPs think they’re doing the right thing.”The bill as a whole seeks to write environmental principles into UK law for the first time, following Brexit.It is currently in the parliamentary stage known as “ping-pong”, where a piece of legislation moves between the Commons and Lords until agreement can be reached.George Eustice, the environment secretary, said a government concession to be considered by MPs on Monday is “mirroring” what peers have already voted for in the Lords.Mr Eustice told G&T on Times Radio on Sunday: “It does everything the Duke of Wellington’s amendment did, and so he recognised that this is a challenge that you wouldn’t solve overnight because the cost of removing all of these storm overflows could be up to £600 billion.”But that’s not to say we shouldn’t significantly reduce their use, and since the 1960s most houses’ surface water drainage has been on a different drainage system to the foul water sewage system, but often they’ve ended up being pumped back into the sewer further down the line.”It may be there’s some interventions that can be made that make a big difference even though they wouldn’t necessarily move all of these CSOs (combined sewer overflows) overnight.”So the Duke of Wellington recognised you wouldn’t do this overnight, that’s why his emphasis was on making a significant reduction in the use of these CSOs, and that is what we’re going to be mirroring in the amendment we’ve tabled.”PA More

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants to talk about climate change. But his opponents want to focus on sleaze.As a United Nations climate summit aimed at staving off catastrophic global warming enters its final week in Glasgow, Scotland, host leader Johnson is facing a barrage of criticism in London over his attempts to change the system that oversees lawmakers’ standards.On Monday, the House of Commons will hold an emergency debate on political ethics after the government tried to block the suspension of a Conservative lawmaker found guilty of breaching lobbying rules.Opposition parties say the episode has revealed a Conservative government that plays fast and loose with the rules, and the want a public inquiry into corruption allegations.Labour Party leader Keir Starmer said Johnson should apologize to the nation and “clean out the filthy Augean stable he has created.”The lobbying episode is the latest to fuel allegations that Johnson and his Conservative government don’t follow rules that apply to everyone else. Lawsuits have been launched over the government’s awarding of tens of millions of pounds (dollars) in contracts to provide equipment and services during the coronavirus pandemic — often in haste and with little oversight.Home Secretary Priti Patel was allowed to keep her job after she was found to have bullied members of staff. Johnson himself has been criticized for accepting expensive holidays in Mustique and Spain, and faces investigation by Parliament’s standards watchdog over the source of money that was used to refurbish his apartment in Downing Street, the prime minister’s official residence.The issue hit boiling point after the House of Commons standards committee recommended a 30-day suspension of Conservative legislator Owen Paterson for lobbying on behalf of two companies that were paying him more than 100,000 pounds ($137,000) a year. The Commons Standards Committee said Paterson’s actions were an “egregious case of paid advocacy” and had “brought the House into disrepute.” Instead of backing the committee’s decision, as has happened in all similar cases for decades, Conservative lawmakers were ordered by the government to oppose it and instead to call for an overhaul of the whole standards process.That vote on Wednesday sparked fury — and not just from the opposition. Generally supportive newspapers reflected the anger, with the Daily Mail proclaiming: “Shameless MPs Slink Back Into Sleaze.”The next day the government did a U-turn, saying it would look for cross-party consensus on overhauling the disciplinary process. Paterson abruptly quit Parliament after 24 years as a lawmaker.Environment Minister George Eustice said the uproar was a “storm in a teacup” of little interest to the wider public.But former Conservative Prime Minister John Major lashed out at Johnson, saying the way the government had acted was “shameful, wrong and unworthy of this or indeed any government.”“There’s a general whiff of ‘we are the masters now’ about their behavior,’” Major told the BBC. “It has to stop, it has to stop soon.” More

Chancellor Angela Merkel has a positive verdict on the influx of migrants to Germany in 2015 and 2016 as she prepares to step down: “We managed it.”Merkel became the face of a welcoming approach to migrants as people fleeing conflicts in Syria and elsewhere trekked across the Balkans. More than 1 million asylum-seekers entered Germany in 2015-16. The chancellor insisted repeatedly that “we will manage” the arrivals, but ran into resistance both at home and among European partners. Merkel is expected to leave office in the coming weeks after 16 years in power. She is preparing to step down with a legacy defined primarily by her handling of a series of crises. Asked in an interview with German broadcaster Deutsche Welle posted late Sunday which crises she found the most personally challenging, Merkel identified the coronavirus pandemic and “the large number of refugees who arrived, which I don’t like to describe as a crisis — people are people.”“Yes, we managed it,” she said. “’We’ were really many, many people in Germany who joined in — many mayors, many volunteers.”Merkel acknowledged that there were problems, citing the 2016 New Year celebrations in Cologne where hundreds of women complained of being groped and robbed, mostly by groups of migrants.“We did of course see that not everything went ideally, and there are serious incidents — if I think of the New Year’s night in Cologne, which perhaps has stuck in people’s minds,” Merkel added. “But on the whole, we have wonderful examples of successful human development,” she said, pointing to migrants who have finished high school in Germany.She conceded that the overall picture on migration remains problematic, with the issues that cause people to flee still unresolved and the European Union having failed to establish a single migration and asylum system.___Follow AP’s global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration More