This unaltered story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.org.
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New lobbying ban wouldn’t have stopped Owen Paterson from taking second job
By: []
Date: 2021-12
Labour MP Chris Bryant, who chairs the committee, has himself earned more than £34,000 from outside interests since the start of November last year. Most of that was linked to books, media appearances or speaking events – including £2,000 for a two-hour webinar with Goldman Sachs.
Bryant has also declared an all-expenses-paid trip to Qatar, the Gulf state with an appalling human rights record. He went with the British-Qatari All-Party Parliamentary Group, and has said that “workers' rights reform” was discussed. But his expenses were covered by the Qatari embassy, to the tune of £7,357.
Another member of the Standards Committee, Tory MP Alberto Costa, is the director of a company that is not listed in his register of interests. The company is understood to be a property management firm for a flat he owns in North London with his wife. But thanks to the lax rules, he may be perfectly entitled to keep quiet about it.
The Standards Committee has often proved to be an embarrassment in Westminster. When I gave evidence to the committee in 2016, three of the six MPs sitting in front of me had themselves been found in breach of the rules – including the then chairman, Sir Kevin Barron.
Likewise, the previous commissioner for standards (who is supposed to be independent) was accused of being “too permissive”. Her independence was called into question when it emerged that a Conservative MP she exonerated over lobbying allegations had sat on the very panel that appointed her.
Loopholes
More shocking, perhaps, are the rules themselves – which manage to be laughably lax and absurdly complex at the same time.
For instance, if an MP is paid a lump sum of £150, they must declare it. But a £200 payment does not need to be declared if it’s divided into two instalments of £100.
It is also within the rules to keep quiet about shareholdings worth less than £70,000. Even if you own a million pounds worth of shares in the same sector of the economy, you can avoid declaring it by simply splitting it up into several smaller investments.
And landlord MPs must state if they own property worth more than £100,000. But they are not required to provide details of the property’s exact location or even how much it’s worth. So, if an MP is lobbying for changes that would benefit their property investments, we often have no way of finding out.
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