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Boris Johnson’s government denied fresh accusations of corruption on Sunday morning in the second scandal to hit the Conservative party in less than a week. But how much is too much for the British public?
Voters in Britain awoke to fresh accusations of corruption against Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government Sunday morning as a newspaper investigation found donors to the Conservative Party had been offered seats in the House of Lords.
The Sunday Times reported that 15 out of a total of 16 Conservative treasurers over the last two decades had donated more than £3 million to the party and then been offered a seat in parliament’s upper chamber.
In response the government denied corruption claims for the second time in less than a week following what has been dubbed a “sleaze scandal” involving former Conservative MP for North Shropshire, Owen Paterson.
Last week government watchdog the Parliamentary Commission for Standards found Paterson had repeatedly lobbied government and officials on behalf of two companies whom he was working for as a consultant for a fee of £100,000 a year.
While paid consultancy is allowed under government rules, the report found that Paterson’s actions on behalf of the two companies in parliament amounted to “paid advocacy”, with one of the companies, Randox, winning a Covid testing contract from the government worth £133 million.
The official report recommended Paterson be suspended from parliament for 30 days as a penalty, but in a highly unusual move, his fellow MPs in the Conservative Party refused the measure.
Instead they organised a vote to overthrow the process for regulating parliamentary standards altogether, which a majority of MPs voted in favour of. The vote also vetoed Paterson’s suspension in advance of a new procedure being put in place, for which the MP told the BBC he was “grateful to the prime minister”.
The vote in…
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Source : france24
