Two items I read yesterday highlighted the chasm in honesty and integrity between MPs and ministers and the civil servants who serve them. I have always thought, without any evidence or first hand experience, that a few decades ago you could find a majority of ministers and even MPs, on both sides, who behaved properly, even without all the codes that have been brought in since. Nowadays, its hard to find any MP or minister who doesn't have 'form' in one way or another,
The first is the finding by the parliamentary committee on standards against former DEFRA Secretary Owen Paterson that he engaged in paid advocacy on behalf of a US company called Randox. The company make machines for testing levels of antibiotics in samples of supermarket milk. He also had contact with the Food Standards Agency on behalf of Lynn’s Country Foods from whom he also received money albeit much less.
Randox paid him £4,166 a month for eight hours work. Nice if you can get it, eh?
To promote their products, he arranged a number of meetings with ministers over a long period but claimed he was doing it out of public interest, altruism perhaps. The Commissioner for standards didn’t believe him. It was as clear a case of paid advocacy, banned under the MPs code of conduct, that you could find.
Instead of accepting it, Paterson tried to defended himself on the grounds that he was doing it to avoid a ‘serious wrong’ and that any gain he or Randox made was ‘incidental’. He thought this would have allowed him to escape punishment. The Commissioner rejected his claim and so did the committee, made up of 14 of his fellow MPs.
Take a look at this bit of the report:
"102.During Mr Paterson’s interview with the Commissioner, he stated that he was fully aware of the lobbying rules before making his approaches:
"103.We asked Mr Paterson in oral evidence whether he was aware, at the time he made his approaches, of the specific “serious wrong” exemption. Mr Paterson initially said he was, but then referred only to his discussions with ACoBA and his understanding that there was provision for “exceptional circumstances”. Mr Paterson also made clear that he did not consult the terms of the rules before he made his approaches:
Chair: […] When you engaged in these various different conversations in these meetings, did you consciously think, “I am using that exception”?
Mr Paterson: Yes. In my discussions with ACoBA at the beginning and the exchange of letters—they sent me the rules, and I obviously read them—I was fully aware of two things. One, always declare an interest—which I have done—and I was aware that there were exceptional circumstances. Something really serious came up. I did not go back and look at the rulebook before I rang up the FSA. I was absolutely clear, according to my judgment, and Iain Duncan Smith makes this point: we are elected for our judgment as MPs. I thought this was a really serious issue. The other two are as well, so I am very confident that I am covered by this.
104.When we questioned Mr Paterson on whether he had considered repaying sums he had received, in order to release himself from restrictions under the lobbying rules, before making his approaches, Mr Paterson replied:
That is a possible option, but no one in ACoBA ever suggested to me that that should be suspended.76
105.ACoBA, the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, is an advisory non-departmental public body based in the Cabinet Office. It does not advise Members on their obligations under the Code of Conduct. It advises former Ministers and Senior Civil Servants on their obligations under the Business Appointment Rules and the Ministerial Code. Mr Paterson, as a former Minister, was indeed required to follow ACoBA’s advice and the applicable provisions of the Business Appointment Rules. But as a serving Member he was also required to abide by the Code of Conduct for Members, on which the Commissioner’s office, not ACoBA, is the authoritative source of advice. We would not expect ACoBA to tender tailored advice on Members’ obligations under the House’s Code of Conduct
In short, he didn’t even realise which code he was breaching and who was responsible for enforcing it! This is a former cabinet minister and an MP since 1997. It is excoriating criticism of him.
Worse, he actually tried to smear the commissioner, Kathryn Stone OBE, rather than accept what he had been doing breached the code. This is a man with 'Rt Honourable' before his name.
"During the course of the investigation, in written evidence, and in oral evidence before us, Mr Paterson has made serious and personal allegations reflecting on the integrity of the Commissioner and her staff."
He suggested Ms Stone had "determined my guilt long before her inquiry finished" and that he and his family had "no doubt that the manner in which this inquiry has been conducted played a massive role in creating the extreme anxiety" that led to his wife's suicide.
It was his own cavalier attitude to rules that created the problems for him and the committee didn't accept the charges he made against the Commissioner. They said "Mr Paterson’s allegations seem to us to spring from incomprehension that the Commissioner could place an interpretation on the rules and the evidence which differed from his own."
Now compare that with this article in the Texas National Security Review from Alexandra Hall Hall, a former official in the FCO charged with promoting Brexit in the USA. She resigned in December 2019 unable to carry on with the work because she was being asked to:
“…..deliver lines on Brexit which were neither fully honest, nor politically impartial. Over the past few months, this made it increasingly hard for me to represent our position on Brexit to US audiences, with conviction and sincerity.”
In the article she expands on the reasons given in her resignation letter:
"My perspective changed only when Johnson became prime minister in July 2019. Even then, in some ways my job became easier, because his government was comprised entirely of politicians who had committed to support his approach on Brexit and the new talking points reflected that clarity. There was no muddle about how we would remain closely bound to the European Union, while simultaneously leaving. Johnson was determined to make a clean break.
"The problem was that the points deliberately papered over the practical consequences of that approach. They were not simply putting a positive spin on policy — a normal practice of any government — but were willfully disingenuous.
"They downplayed the impact of Brexit on the ability of ordinary citizens to live, work, or study in the European Union, or collaborate with E.U. citizens or institutions. They downplayed the costs of having to create new institutions and programs in the United Kingdom to replace the ones we had previously belonged to in the European Union. They downplayed the increased friction that was likely for businesses trading between the United Kingdom and the E.U. countries, as well as third countries such as the United States.
"But, most damagingly, the talking points also downplayed the consequences of Brexit for the delicate peace process in Northern Ireland, in which the United States was a core stakeholder, having helped to broker the Good Friday Agreement and supported it since then.
"When I was asked to brief American businesses with significant investments in the United Kingdom, I found myself struggling to maintain the line that there would be no harmful consequences for them, even if the United Kingdom left the European Union without any deal at all. I found it hard to brush aside the concerns of congressional aides working for members of the Irish-American caucus.
"Sometimes I had no answers to the questions that U.S. stakeholders posed to me. The internal dissonance became acute: The professional ethos of the British Diplomatic Service was that we were upstanding civil servants, steeped in integrity, who never told lies. And yet, that was precisely what I was being asked to do."
