UK politics live: No 10 denies being motivated by desire to let Owen Paterson off the hook | Politics

From the Times’ Steven Swinford

My colleague Aubrey Allegretti has also been told Tory MPs are already getting emails from angry constituents about this vote.

Bryant says changing the rules at the last moment to benefit an individual is the very definition of injustice.

And he says what is being proposed today is the opposite of due process. The new committee would not be independent, because it has already been decided who should chair it.

He says if this amendment is passed there will be two Commons standards committees operating. He says his committee is reviewing how the code of conduct works, as it is obliged to do every parliament. He says he accepts that it could do things better.

He says the committee did review the facts. But he suggests that there might be a case for saying it should, separately, be possible to appeal the sanction proposed (which would be different).

He says the outcome would have been different if Paterson had come to the committee and admitted he made a mistake. But Paterson did not do that, he says. He says the aggravating factor was “the lack of insight into a conflict of interest”.

And he ends by warning MPs they will be making a serious mistake if they back the Leadsom amendment.

Bryant says Owen Paterson had a fair hearing.

He says Paterson was able to make his case to the committee. The session was conducted respectfully, he says. He says Paterson is nodding at this point.

He says the proposed punishment is in line with other similar cases.

He says Paterson has said that he would do what he did again if he had the chance.

That means, if the report is overturned, MPs will be “dismantling the rule on paid advocacy, which has been around in some shape or form since 1695”.

Back in the Commons Chris Bryant, the Labour chair of the Commons standards committee, is winding up the debate.

He says he has considerable sympathy for Owen Paterson. He says he has experienced suicide in his family, and (as a vicar) presided over many funeral following suicides.

He says Paterson repeatedly broke the rules. He says he has not encountered any Tory MP who has not told him that Paterson “clearly broke the rules” – and that includes Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, he says.

(It is not clear whether this means Rees-Mogg privately thinks Paterson was in the wrong, or – as Rees-Mogg told the Commons earlier – he thinks that Paterson did break the rules, but that this was allowed, because of the public safety exemption.)

There is some mystery in the press gallery as to why Boris Johnson is pressing ahead with this vote, when the optics look so awful. One possible answer is that perhaps Johnson has concluded that perhaps voters do not care very much about this stuff.

If so, this calculation may be wrong, the Mirror’s Pippa Crerar says.

Sir Bill Cash (Con) is speaking now. The Speaker tells him he has just three minutes.

Cash says the committee should have set up an advisory panel to help it consider this case.

Harriet Harman (Lab), the mother of the house, is speaking now.

She says she has the utmost sympathy for Owen Paterson because of what happened to his wife. She admires the way he has responded to that by campaigning for other families affected by suicide like this, and she says in their time in the Commons together Paterson has always shown her kindness and courtesy.

But she says this is a process set up by MPs.

Changes can be proposed. But, as Alistair Carmichael said, that should only happen with cross-party support.

She says it is not right to overturn a decision because people have misgivings about its outcome.

Andrea Leadsom, the Conservative former leader of the Commons, is speaking now. She says she was disappointed by Pete Wishart’s speech. She says she thoroughly rejects the charge that she is being “disingenuous”, and only tabling this amendment to protect Owen Paterson.

She says Kathryn Stone, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, takes her job seriously. But she is not required to have a legal background. And she operates as the investigator and judge, Leadsom says.

She says, under a new system, the accused should be able to put their case to an independent case manager. She says witnesses for both sides should be heard. Legal representation should be allowed. The investigator should not be the prosecutor. And there should be a clear appeals process, she says.

Yvette Cooper (Lab) asks why Leadsom did not do anything about this when she was Commons leader if she thought the system was flawed.

Leadsom says she was working full time setting up the independent complaints and greivence scheme to protect MPs’ staff and Commons officials from bullying and sexual harrasment by MPs. If she had stayed in place, these reforms would have come next, she says.

Leadsom says, under her plan, she would like the committee to come up with a new system within three months.

In a reference to the suicide of Owen Paterson’s wife, she says it is sad that it has taken a tragedy for the Commons to act.

Pete Wishart, the SNP spokesman on Commons matters, says he could not believe it when told the government would try to vote down the Owen Paterson report. He says he thought only a few MPs would try this.

He says he does not mind it if the Commons is seen as “sleaze-ridden and crony-ridden”. That benefits the SNP, he says.

He says, although the Andrea Leadsom amendment says the SNP should have a seat on the new committee, the SNP will “not serve on any kangaroo court … in order to do away with any independent process”.

And he says Kathryn Stone, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, will have every right to walk way if the Leadsom motion is passed.

(He is the first MP to say this, but he must be right. If the Leadsom motion passes, Stone must be likely to resign.)

Sir Peter Bottomley (Con), the father of the house, is speaking now. He says he would vote to support the committee’s recommendations. And he would have voted for the Julian Lewis amendment, he says. (See 9.55am.) But he will not back the Andrea Leadsom amendment.

He says if the government wants a new system, it should propose one. But it should not be trying to change the system like this.

Debbonaire says it would be extraordinary for the Commons to overturn the standards committee findings.

And only last month, in the Rob Roberts case, the government was opposing retrospectively changing the rules, she says.

She says it is only Tory MPs who want to shelve the committee’s report.

Debbonaire says the government is giving out the impression that paid advocacy is fine.

It is being argued that Owen Paterson had no right of appeal.

But the commissioner’s findings were reviewed by the cross-party standards committee, she says.

And, she says, just because witnesses wanted to give evidence in person, that does not mean it should always happen. That does not happen in courts, she says; it is not the case anyone can always give evidence.

Thangam Debbonaire, the shadow leader of the Commons, is responding for Labour.

She says the committee concluded that this was an egregious case of paid advocacy.

Dame Margaret Hodge (Lab) intervenes to suggest that the most logical explanation for what the government is doing is that it is worried about the findings of further standards committee inquiries.

Debbonaire agrees that there is something odd about the timing of this. She says if the government wanted a debate on a new disciplinary process for MPs, it could have scheduled one itself.

Rees-Mogg says in the House of Lords peers do have a right of appeal against a finding by the standards commissioner.

He confirms that the government is backing the Leadsom amendment. (See 9.55am.)

He says the review the Leadsom would set up would be a method that would allow the Commons to reset the process.

He says the new committee it would set up, chaired by the former Tory cabinet minister John Whittingdale, would not be the “judge, jury and executioner” in the Owen Paterson case. The committee would just decide whether or not the case should be reviewed.

Stephen Timms (Lab) says, if the exception mentioned by Rees-Mogg to the lobbying rule is allowed in the way Rees-Mogg suggested, then in practice there would be no ban on paid advocacy at all.

Rees-Mogg says there should a whistleblowing exemption. But he says in this case there has been a dispute about how widely that should apply.