The Parliamentary Standards Committee recommended that the House of Commons suspend Conservative MP Owen Paterson for 30 days for a number of 'cash for questions' offences outlined by the Standards Commissioner.
So he panicked, whipping his MPs to vote against the motion - normally approved unanimously - to suspend Paterson. 13 of them voted in favour of the motion to suspend, i.e. against the Government and 38 (shamefully - do you not care about this important issue?) abstained. A Minister was sacked.
Today the government reversed its stance and promised a repeat of the suspension vote. The Minister was un-sacked.
Later Owen Paterson resigned as an MP. So there will no longer be a re-vote.
Could the government have handled this any worse?
Could a few more Tory MPs discover their moral backbone?
ReplyDeleteI try to be factually accurate in my blog so I have a correction: Angela Richardson, MP for Guildford, was not "sacked as a Minister". She is a PPS at the Department For Education, an unpaid flunky rather than a Minister, and is now back in that role. Given that she was sacked for defying a three line whip, which is exactly what she did, it is baffling that (a) she was reinstated and (b) she was prepared to continue working for a regime which had summarily fired her. It means the government will always have your back when it makes a U Turn.
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