To trigger Article 16 while still supporting the Good Friday agreement is to reject both available options. It is to campaign under the slogan “Reality? No thank you!” And this is indeed, as Sir John says, unconservative.
There is a parallel here with the Paterson affair. A group of very self-confident people managed to persuade the rest of the party to act as if Paterson had not done what he absolutely had done. Everyone was persuaded to treat the most ludicrous “dog ate my homework” defence as if the accused was Dreyfus. It is an object lesson in the deleterious consequences of ignoring reality.
The reason why the prime minister agreed to the protocol is that he thought he would be much stronger fighting an election with a withdrawal agreement than offering a no-deal Brexit. And he was correct. Doing that deal was central to the result. It is not just that there were some Conservative-inclined Remainers who would not have voted for a no-deal party. That might have been a relatively small group. It is that large numbers of voters wanted to get the whole thing over with, tie up the loose ends, get on with life. It is these people who will feel bemused and perhaps betrayed if the whole saga begins again. As it might well if we trigger Article 16.
The government has argued that the Northern Ireland protocol has had unexpected consequences. That is flatly not true. That it involved a border in the Irish Sea and regulatory obstacles for Northern Ireland was entirely obvious when it was signed. Indeed it was the subject of extensive public debate.
If the Conservative Party no longer thinks our international agreements matter or that our word as a country is important then, really, what is it? What has it become?
Naah. Triggering A16 is literally the end of the process. We hold all the cards. There will be no trade war. Huzzah for Boris!
It may well be that Cox hasn't broken any significant rules and is given a clean bill of health, though if I were one of his constituents I'd be pretty cheesed off that he spends so little time representing me in Parliament.
But isn't the story really about greed? Here's a chap earning £82k for his "main" (ha ha) job, and yet raking in hundreds of thousands of pounds from his "second" jobs, money that over 99% of voters can only dream of, and yet is still sufficiently stingy to make a claim of 49p on expenses for some milk (yes, I know that was some years ago)?
Sadly it seems I won't be able to use the headline 'Cox out!'
Cox, who is the MP for Torridge & West Devon, is understood to be determined to fight his corner and has told friends that there is “nothing new” in the reports. He is said to have privately dismissed calls for him to resign.
On Cox, if it's just a case of him being sat in his parl office using the computer etc to do the side work, I can't get that worked up about it. If any taxpayer funded aides had been used to assist with that work, then I'd be pretty cross - even if he was using taxpayer funded printing etc. But I don't really see here how the taxpayer loses out any more than if he did his business fom Starbucks.
Of course, if it is against the rules then he has a case to answer, but - as per the comments reported by rottenborough - it seems to be a bit of a grey area. If you're permitted second jobs and you're in your office doing MP work when a meeting is scheduled by video call, what is gained by you stepping outside?
It's interesting the number across the political spectrum (including myself) posting the same comment. The focus on this is wrong. If there is a break in the rules it appears technical.
It sounds like the rules are out of date and apply to the days before the office was mobile. @Sandpit did a good post I thought.
It will be dismissed as relatively minor, and certainly Cox seems to have been focused on because of the amount he has earned rather than any specific misbehaviour as this is the first actual such listed, but rules are rules, and parliamentary resources shouldn't be used for non parliamentary work. MPs get chided frequently about sending things on House of Commons letterhead which shouldn't be for example.
I bet Cox has broken no rules.
What did he do? It seems he may have connected by zoom to a meeting from his desk in his Parliamentary office. So, what resources did he use?
Assuming he is using his own computer, then I guess there is wear and tear on the chair where he parked his ample trouser seat, and slight abrasion of his desk by the base of his laptop.
This seems to me more trivial that using House of Commons letter paper, for which MPs seem to get regularly done for.
I bet there are no Parliamentary rules on zoom use.
The Commissioner will gleefully demonstrate that you are wrong.
So, please be specific. What rule do you think Cox has broken?
I think if he had invited people to his MP's office to conduct private business, you would be right.
He connected via zoom.
If he was using his own computing resources, I don't think he has done anything wrong.
The simple rule that you cannot use the parliamentary estate for private profit. Read the front page of The Times for the exact rule. As he is on a zoom call working for the BVI in their case against HMG in an office owned by HMG its pretty open and shut.
To trigger Article 16 while still supporting the Good Friday agreement is to reject both available options. It is to campaign under the slogan “Reality? No thank you!” And this is indeed, as Sir John says, unconservative.
There is a parallel here with the Paterson affair. A group of very self-confident people managed to persuade the rest of the party to act as if Paterson had not done what he absolutely had done. Everyone was persuaded to treat the most ludicrous “dog ate my homework” defence as if the accused was Dreyfus. It is an object lesson in the deleterious consequences of ignoring reality.
The reason why the prime minister agreed to the protocol is that he thought he would be much stronger fighting an election with a withdrawal agreement than offering a no-deal Brexit. And he was correct. Doing that deal was central to the result. It is not just that there were some Conservative-inclined Remainers who would not have voted for a no-deal party. That might have been a relatively small group. It is that large numbers of voters wanted to get the whole thing over with, tie up the loose ends, get on with life. It is these people who will feel bemused and perhaps betrayed if the whole saga begins again. As it might well if we trigger Article 16.
The government has argued that the Northern Ireland protocol has had unexpected consequences. That is flatly not true. That it involved a border in the Irish Sea and regulatory obstacles for Northern Ireland was entirely obvious when it was signed. Indeed it was the subject of extensive public debate.
If the Conservative Party no longer thinks our international agreements matter or that our word as a country is important then, really, what is it? What has it become?
Naah. Triggering A16 is literally the end of the process. We hold all the cards. There will be no trade war. Huzzah for Boris!
Quite right.
Sir John is delusional and has never reconciled to Brexit. The dying gasp of people who can't accept Brexit should be ignored and the government should plow on with Article 16 because there is no alternative.
Mr. Gate, problem is that if somebody has a great career and doesn't want to be utterly out of the game for an unspecified period of time (and to have a ready fall-back if they do fail to be re-elected) it seems unreasonable to totally ban such a thing.
Especially when every single minister and shadow minister has two jobs (MP and being/shadowing a minister).
News emerged last night that Tory MP for Richville West, Sir Toppum Hat, repeatedly went to the toilet on parliamentary premises. He used the toilet on fifteen separate occasions, and wasted sixty sheets of parliamentary toilet paper on what can only be described as intensely 'personal' business.
"It's a disgrace!" commented Labour MP, Mr H.P. O'cryte. "He wasted over an hour luxuriating on the toilet, when he should have been looking after the affairs of his constituents. This misuse of parliamentary time, premises and materials should be investigated immediately, and Mr Hat should be immediately taken onto Parliament Green and hung for his crimes against humanity."
Lib Dem MP Gram A'Nazi commented: "Hanged! Not Hung! This is a sad indictment on the public shool education of our Labour MPs"
People who monitor vaccine (uptake) data - are there any signs of an increase in (first and second dose) uptake in Scotland and Wales since introduction of vaccine passes for nightclubs etc?
It will be dismissed as relatively minor, and certainly Cox seems to have been focused on because of the amount he has earned rather than any specific misbehaviour as this is the first actual such listed, but rules are rules, and parliamentary resources shouldn't be used for non parliamentary work. MPs get chided frequently about sending things on House of Commons letterhead which shouldn't be for example.
I bet Cox has broken no rules.
What did he do? It seems he may have connected by zoom to a meeting from his desk in his Parliamentary office. So, what resources did he use?
Assuming he is using his own computer, then I guess there is wear and tear on the chair where he parked his ample trouser seat, and slight abrasion of his desk by the base of his laptop.
This seems to me more trivial that using House of Commons letter paper, for which MPs seem to get regularly done for.
I bet there are no Parliamentary rules on zoom use.
The Commissioner will gleefully demonstrate that you are wrong.
Serious Q: has the Commissioner previously made such a decision?
If she is serious / competent - and she's the only one I have noticed in that role since Elizabeth Filkin (Mandelson Mortgage case) - then she won't be doing *anything* gleefully.
Not sure how good Philip Mawer and John Lyon were. Philip Mawer was previously a bureaucrat in the Church of England Synod General Synod. No idea who John Lyon was - on the whole I found him a bit weak wrt expenses, and missed some of the opportunities.
My "gleeful" comment is that having survived an effort by HMG to remove her she won't hesitate to investigate any and all alleged breaches and bring down full sanctions against them. Whether that is Cox using his parliamentary office for private profit or the Downing Street flat refurb "the money wss only resting in my account" saga which seems to be the thing Boris is really trying to deflect away from.
If you recall there was a fantastic exchange at PMQs over that one. Starmer laying into Boris and clearly suggesting he knew more than he was saying and Boris going almost puce as he ranted back at Starmer.
No wonder they needed to remove the Commissioner and scrap the standards system (would have saved Cox as well).
I see the PM's decision to support Owen Paterson has gone well.
Neither has HY's assurance the day after that it was all over!
The Tories still lead in all the 5 polls taken since the Mori poll which put Labour ahead. So the damage has been somewhat reduced from what it could have been.
Labour have also now started to get caught by this issue. David Lammy for example has earned £141,000 from Google, Facebook and City corporations and Starmer made £25k from legal advice.
You may be correct that IDS's grifting won't affect the Conservatives in the longer term, but your assumption that any association with Labour sleaze will neutralise Tory sleaze is erroneous. Cast your mind back to the "Labour" expenses scandal. Everyone was at it, but it stuck to Labour alone.
I'm not on that last point. I always remember it as MP's Expenses Scandal. When I typed that into Google, 'duck house' was the fourth predicted option. Unless there was another duck house of which I was unaware, that particularly notable expense was claimed by a Conservative MP.
It may well be that Cox hasn't broken any significant rules and is given a clean bill of health, though if I were one of his constituents I'd be pretty cheesed off that he spends so little time representing me in Parliament.
But isn't the story really about greed? Here's a chap earning £82k for his "main" (ha ha) job, and yet raking in hundreds of thousands of pounds from his "second" jobs, money that over 99% of voters can only dream of, and yet is still sufficiently stingy to make a claim of 49p on expenses for some milk (yes, I know that was some years ago)?
One wonders why on earth he wanted to become an MP in the first place.
On Cox, if it's just a case of him being sat in his parl office using the computer etc to do the side work, I can't get that worked up about it. If any taxpayer funded aides had been used to assist with that work, then I'd be pretty cross - even if he was using taxpayer funded printing etc. But I don't really see here how the taxpayer loses out any more than if he did his business fom Starbucks.
Of course, if it is against the rules then he has a case to answer, but - as per the comments reported by rottenborough - it seems to be a bit of a grey area. If you're permitted second jobs and you're in your office doing MP work when a meeting is scheduled by video call, what is gained by you stepping outside?
It's interesting the number across the political spectrum (including myself) posting the same comment. The focus on this is wrong. If there is a break in the rules it appears technical.
It sounds like the rules are out of date and apply to the days before the office was mobile. @Sandpit did a good post I thought.
Cox is a side play. But it adds to the "one rule for us, another for them" narrative which is fuelling this story. Its Day 11 now - anyone care to suggest how long it goes on?
Dear me. We are at risk today of being drowned - not by the rising seas caused by climate change - but a veritable tsunami of crocodile tears, especially from those who poo-poohed those of us who pointed out last year the problems with how the government was operating - over contracts and much else.
I distinctly recall writing headers pointing out the issues - specifically, conflicts of interest. And the problem with automatically defending bad behaviour if it was done by your side. And much else besides.
And the response was " it's an emergency" and "no we can't possibly take the 5 minutes needed to declare a conflict of interest or do some accelerated due diligence" and "what's wrong with VIP lanes for friends of the PM and Ministers" and "don't be so moralistic or high-minded" etc etc.
And here we are with the shit hitting the fan as it was always going to do, as plenty of people warned.
You can have all the rules you want but if people refuse to accept they apply to them because they know that their ultimate boss won't enforce them then there is damn all you can do. A good culture comes from the top. And at the top we have a PM who could not care less about these matters. This is not a surprise. Tory MPs and Tory party members were warned about this long before they elected him. They chose to ignore those warnings. Voters did too So now they are getting what they voted for.
We can ask lots of questions about why MPs find it so hard to do the right thing.
We might also ask why it is that voters don't care enough about these matters to ensure that MPs do the right thing. If voters cared about this enough to change their votes then MPs would pretty soon change. They don't. So MPs look at the 80-seat majority and their large individual majorities and safe seats and think that this does not really matter very much to voters.
And those who point out that this hubristic "we are the masters now" approach leads to poor governance and corruption and a careless approach to spending taxpayers' money and the appointment of inadequate and incompetents to important posts and a general Italianisation of our public sphere get ignored or criticised.
Until those at the top take it seriously, until voters take it seriously this stuff will keep on happening.
It's a change of heart which is needed. Not simply a change in the rules.
DYOR and make sure you've got your back and lay the right way round, as we (well, Philip) discovered yesterday I'm done with this market, so I'm not partaking any more, just watching in morbid fascination at the people apparently offering free money (unless the layer is Sajid Javid engaged in a bit of insider trading!)
Interesting. Thanks. I wont be going for it as I'm not on smarkets and have spent enough on political bets recently. But useful to see.
On Cox, if it's just a case of him being sat in his parl office using the computer etc to do the side work, I can't get that worked up about it. If any taxpayer funded aides had been used to assist with that work, then I'd be pretty cross - even if he was using taxpayer funded printing etc. But I don't really see here how the taxpayer loses out any more than if he did his business fom Starbucks.
Of course, if it is against the rules then he has a case to answer, but - as per the comments reported by rottenborough - it seems to be a bit of a grey area. If you're permitted second jobs and you're in your office doing MP work when a meeting is scheduled by video call, what is gained by you stepping outside?
Whether Cox broke the rules or not, it all does have a whiff of duck houses and heated stables about it. Within the rules possibly, but at the height of the winter covid wave to be in the Carribean trousering large sums of money from a tax haven. An MP defending a government accused of corruption, while the British public were locked down and not even allowed to go to funerals.
The optics of Cox absolutely stinks. It shows what the Tories really think is important.
It may well be that Cox hasn't broken any significant rules and is given a clean bill of health, though if I were one of his constituents I'd be pretty cheesed off that he spends so little time representing me in Parliament.
But isn't the story really about greed? Here's a chap earning £82k for his "main" (ha ha) job, and yet raking in hundreds of thousands of pounds from his "second" jobs, money that over 99% of voters can only dream of, and yet is still sufficiently stingy to make a claim of 49p on expenses for some milk (yes, I know that was some years ago)?
If he was Secretary of State for XXX he would spend an equally small part of his time representing his constituents in Parliament.
On Cox, if it's just a case of him being sat in his parl office using the computer etc to do the side work, I can't get that worked up about it. If any taxpayer funded aides had been used to assist with that work, then I'd be pretty cross - even if he was using taxpayer funded printing etc. But I don't really see here how the taxpayer loses out any more than if he did his business fom Starbucks.
Of course, if it is against the rules then he has a case to answer, but - as per the comments reported by rottenborough - it seems to be a bit of a grey area. If you're permitted second jobs and you're in your office doing MP work when a meeting is scheduled by video call, what is gained by you stepping outside?
It's interesting the number across the political spectrum (including myself) posting the same comment. The focus on this is wrong. If there is a break in the rules it appears technical.
It sounds like the rules are out of date and apply to the days before the office was mobile. @Sandpit did a good post I thought.
Cox is a side play. But it adds to the "one rule for us, another for them" narrative which is fuelling this story. Its Day 11 now - anyone care to suggest how long it goes on?
It could go on for ages, as investigative journalists and others (including Labour Party officers) work their way through the alphabetical Register of Members' Interests, where all this stuff is availably to anybody interested.
The focus on Cox suggests that so far they've done A-C, so still D-Z to go.
On Cox, if it's just a case of him being sat in his parl office using the computer etc to do the side work, I can't get that worked up about it. If any taxpayer funded aides had been used to assist with that work, then I'd be pretty cross - even if he was using taxpayer funded printing etc. But I don't really see here how the taxpayer loses out any more than if he did his business fom Starbucks.
Of course, if it is against the rules then he has a case to answer, but - as per the comments reported by rottenborough - it seems to be a bit of a grey area. If you're permitted second jobs and you're in your office doing MP work when a meeting is scheduled by video call, what is gained by you stepping outside?
It's interesting the number across the political spectrum (including myself) posting the same comment. The focus on this is wrong. If there is a break in the rules it appears technical.
It sounds like the rules are out of date and apply to the days before the office was mobile. @Sandpit did a good post I thought.
Cox is a side play. But it adds to the "one rule for us, another for them" narrative which is fuelling this story. Its Day 11 now - anyone care to suggest how long it goes on?
It could go on for ages, as investigative journalists and others (including Labour Party officers) work their way through the alphabetical Register of Members' Interests, where all this stuff is availably to anybody interested.
The focus on Cox suggests that so far they've done A-C, so still D-Z to go.
Dear me. We are at risk today of being drowned - not by the rising seas caused by climate change - but a veritable tsunami of crocodile tears, especially from those who poo-poohed those of us who pointed out last year the problems with how the government was operating - over contracts and much else.
I distinctly recall writing headers pointing out the issues - specifically, conflicts of interest. And the problem with automatically defending bad behaviour if it was done by your side. And much else besides.
And the response was " it's an emergency" and "no we can't possibly take the 5 minutes needed to declare a conflict of interest or do some accelerated due diligence" and "what's wrong with VIP lanes for friends of the PM and Ministers" and "don't be so moralistic or high-minded" etc etc.
And here we are with the shit hitting the fan as it was always going to do, as plenty of people warned.
You can have all the rules you want but if people refuse to accept they apply to them because they know that their ultimate boss won't enforce them then there is damn all you can do. A good culture comes from the top. And at the top we have a PM who could not care less about these matters. This is not a surprise. Tory MPs and Tory party members were warned about this long before they elected him. They chose to ignore those warnings. Voters did too So now they are getting what they voted for.
We can ask lots of questions about why MPs find it so hard to do the right thing.
We might also ask why it is that voters don't care enough about these matters to ensure that MPs do the right thing. If voters cared about this enough to change their votes then MPs would pretty soon change. They don't. So MPs look at the 80-seat majority and their large individual majorities and safe seats and think that this does not really matter very much to voters.
And those who point out that this hubristic "we are the masters now" approach leads to poor governance and corruption and a careless approach to spending taxpayers' money and the appointment of inadequate and incompetents to important posts and a general Italianisation of our public sphere get ignored or criticised.
Until those at the top take it seriously, until voters take it seriously this stuff will keep on happening.
It's a change of heart which is needed. Not simply a change in the rules.
I can cope with emergency contracts. What I object to is that being used as an excuse for everything that followed:
Contract awarded without tender not to expert company but to one founded last week by a Tory. Lets understand how / why that decision was made to avoid it in the next emergency
Contract awarded where vast sums (so often a £107m contract) were paid for equipment that was delivered faulty / not at all. Lets understand how we have paid for something we haven't received or can't use with no ability to claw back the money
Contract awarded with clear conflict of interest. We can have no future repeat of the "VIP channel" where top Tories lobby to have emergency 9-figure contracts awarded to top Tories
Contracts awarded on top of contracts on top of contracts. Its questionable enough awarding a contract worth double the value of a business even if they are in that field (unlike some others). Its then awarding procurement contracts on top then storage contracts on top. A transport company paid to transport stuff they have been paid to produce which turns out to be overprices usuable crap which the company then wins a further contract to store. Really?
Lets pick these apart, get our money back where the contract hasn't been fulfilled and learn the lessons.
Dear me. We are at risk today of being drowned - not by the rising seas caused by climate change - but a veritable tsunami of crocodile tears, especially from those who poo-poohed those of us who pointed out last year the problems with how the government was operating - over contracts and much else.
I distinctly recall writing headers pointing out the issues - specifically, conflicts of interest. And the problem with automatically defending bad behaviour if it was done by your side. And much else besides.
And the response was " it's an emergency" and "no we can't possibly take the 5 minutes needed to declare a conflict of interest or do some accelerated due diligence" and "what's wrong with VIP lanes for friends of the PM and Ministers" and "don't be so moralistic or high-minded" etc etc.
And here we are with the shit hitting the fan as it was always going to do, as plenty of people warned.
You can have all the rules you want but if people refuse to accept they apply to them because they know that their ultimate boss won't enforce them then there is damn all you can do. A good culture comes from the top. And at the top we have a PM who could not care less about these matters. This is not a surprise. Tory MPs and Tory party members were warned about this long before they elected him. They chose to ignore those warnings. Voters did too So now they are getting what they voted for.
We can ask lots of questions about why MPs find it so hard to do the right thing.
We might also ask why it is that voters don't care enough about these matters to ensure that MPs do the right thing. If voters cared about this enough to change their votes then MPs would pretty soon change. They don't. So MPs look at the 80-seat majority and their large individual majorities and safe seats and think that this does not really matter very much to voters.
And those who point out that this hubristic "we are the masters now" approach leads to poor governance and corruption and a careless approach to spending taxpayers' money and the appointment of inadequate and incompetents to important posts and a general Italianisation of our public sphere get ignored or criticised.
Until those at the top take it seriously, until voters take it seriously this stuff will keep on happening.
It's a change of heart which is needed. Not simply a change in the rules.
As others have pointed out on social media, the way the press has to follow narratives is really quite interesting. So stories which we all knew a year ago - cash for peerages, conflicts all over the place over Covid procurement, Boris being funded by his rich mates - all of these were left alone by the press because that wasn't the story of the moment. Now we have a narrative: Tory sleaze, so all these stories which have been known about since forever are dragged out to feed the narrative.
The government's error was not realising that lack of interest at one point in time doesn't mean lack of interest forever.
I want the most able people who are willing to give up their time to be MPs. I think we have to accept if we are going to get that additional earnings are a part of the package. But I also expect that people are much more alert to both actual and perceived conflicts of interest and accept that there are somethings that they just cannot do.
This is where I think you are quite wrong. I do not want the most able people if they are not honest and motivated to serve the public. This isn't a comment on Geoffrey Cox - but a more general point.
Exactly , also someone who will do the job we are paying them for and not use our resources to make a fortune for robbing gits in tax havens. If he does not have the intelligence to realise how crooked it looks he is not fit for a public job.
It may well be that Cox hasn't broken any significant rules and is given a clean bill of health, though if I were one of his constituents I'd be pretty cheesed off that he spends so little time representing me in Parliament.
But isn't the story really about greed? Here's a chap earning £82k for his "main" (ha ha) job, and yet raking in hundreds of thousands of pounds from his "second" jobs, money that over 99% of voters can only dream of, and yet is still sufficiently stingy to make a claim of 49p on expenses for some milk (yes, I know that was some years ago)?
If he was Secretary of State for XXX he would spend an equally small part of his time representing his constituents in Parliament.
Yes but it's well understood that the trade off for having a minister as an MP is the corresponding influence they gain. They won't be able to raise your case in the House but they can have a chat with the right minister after Cabinet. Cox's second job isn't going to help his constituents unless their problem is a planning dispute in the British Virgin Islands or something.
It may well be that Cox hasn't broken any significant rules and is given a clean bill of health, though if I were one of his constituents I'd be pretty cheesed off that he spends so little time representing me in Parliament.
But isn't the story really about greed? Here's a chap earning £82k for his "main" (ha ha) job, and yet raking in hundreds of thousands of pounds from his "second" jobs, money that over 99% of voters can only dream of, and yet is still sufficiently stingy to make a claim of 49p on expenses for some milk (yes, I know that was some years ago)?
If he was Secretary of State for XXX he would spend an equally small part of his time representing his constituents in Parliament.
Yes but it's well understood that the trade off for having a minister as an MP is the corresponding influence they gain. They won't be able to raise your case in the House but they can have a chat with the right minister after Cabinet. Cox's second job isn't going to help his constituents unless their problem is a planning dispute in the British Virgin Islands or something.
That is true but he does/has attended the House hasn't he, although this past 18 months it's all gone to cock a bit.
Dear me. We are at risk today of being drowned - not by the rising seas caused by climate change - but a veritable tsunami of crocodile tears, especially from those who poo-poohed those of us who pointed out last year the problems with how the government was operating - over contracts and much else.
I distinctly recall writing headers pointing out the issues - specifically, conflicts of interest. And the problem with automatically defending bad behaviour if it was done by your side. And much else besides.
And the response was " it's an emergency" and "no we can't possibly take the 5 minutes needed to declare a conflict of interest or do some accelerated due diligence" and "what's wrong with VIP lanes for friends of the PM and Ministers" and "don't be so moralistic or high-minded" etc etc.
And here we are with the shit hitting the fan as it was always going to do, as plenty of people warned.
You can have all the rules you want but if people refuse to accept they apply to them because they know that their ultimate boss won't enforce them then there is damn all you can do. A good culture comes from the top. And at the top we have a PM who could not care less about these matters. This is not a surprise. Tory MPs and Tory party members were warned about this long before they elected him. They chose to ignore those warnings. Voters did too So now they are getting what they voted for.
We can ask lots of questions about why MPs find it so hard to do the right thing.
We might also ask why it is that voters don't care enough about these matters to ensure that MPs do the right thing. If voters cared about this enough to change their votes then MPs would pretty soon change. They don't. So MPs look at the 80-seat majority and their large individual majorities and safe seats and think that this does not really matter very much to voters.
And those who point out that this hubristic "we are the masters now" approach leads to poor governance and corruption and a careless approach to spending taxpayers' money and the appointment of inadequate and incompetents to important posts and a general Italianisation of our public sphere get ignored or criticised.
Until those at the top take it seriously, until voters take it seriously this stuff will keep on happening.
It's a change of heart which is needed. Not simply a change in the rules.
As others have pointed out on social media, the way the press has to follow narratives is really quite interesting. So stories which we all knew a year ago - cash for peerages, conflicts all over the place over Covid procurement, Boris being funded by his rich mates - all of these were left alone by the press because that wasn't the story of the moment. Now we have a narrative: Tory sleaze, so all these stories which have been known about since forever are dragged out to feed the narrative.
The government's error was not realising that lack of interest at one point in time doesn't mean lack of interest forever.
Narrative is key to a news cycle. So often a major story breaks a period after time after first being reported. The "news" was out there but it was not yet a story. Private Eye has made a career out of this over decades...
On Cox, if it's just a case of him being sat in his parl office using the computer etc to do the side work, I can't get that worked up about it. If any taxpayer funded aides had been used to assist with that work, then I'd be pretty cross - even if he was using taxpayer funded printing etc. But I don't really see here how the taxpayer loses out any more than if he did his business fom Starbucks.
Of course, if it is against the rules then he has a case to answer, but - as per the comments reported by rottenborough - it seems to be a bit of a grey area. If you're permitted second jobs and you're in your office doing MP work when a meeting is scheduled by video call, what is gained by you stepping outside?
Whether Cox broke the rules or not, it all does have a whiff of duck houses and heated stables about it. Within the rules possibly, but at the height of the winter covid wave to be in the Carribean trousering large sums of money from a tax haven. An MP defending a government accused of corruption, while the British public were locked down and not even allowed to go to funerals.
The optics of Cox absolutely stinks. It shows what the Tories really think is important.
I agree the optics are awful. But the only bit that seems to be, possibly, against the rules is rather trivial. As, indeed, a lot of things that came out in the expenses scandal were within the rules, just illustrative of how out of touch some MPs were.
Re Duck house, it seemed to take the heat off the odd claims from Treasury Ministers. IRIC Kitty Ussher had claimed for extensive kitchen redevelopments, and Alistair Darling had flipped his second home. At the time I thought that Treasury Ministers were making expense claims which were unlikely to be necessary for their work. I also wondered why Darling was encouraged to leave The Faculty of Advocates.
Shredding Tony Blair's records didn't seem to be accidental.
As for Boris Johnson, he like Churchill seems to be happy for others to help him live in a style to which he is accustomed, and like Churchill he has been willing to have a lucrative second career in journalism, allied to a cavalier attitude to expenses.
It will be dismissed as relatively minor, and certainly Cox seems to have been focused on because of the amount he has earned rather than any specific misbehaviour as this is the first actual such listed, but rules are rules, and parliamentary resources shouldn't be used for non parliamentary work. MPs get chided frequently about sending things on House of Commons letterhead which shouldn't be for example.
I bet Cox has broken no rules.
What did he do? It seems he may have connected by zoom to a meeting from his desk in his Parliamentary office. So, what resources did he use?
Assuming he is using his own computer, then I guess there is wear and tear on the chair where he parked his ample trouser seat, and slight abrasion of his desk by the base of his laptop.
This seems to me more trivial that using House of Commons letter paper, for which MPs seem to get regularly done for.
I bet there are no Parliamentary rules on zoom use.
The Commissioner will gleefully demonstrate that you are wrong.
So, please be specific. What rule do you think Cox has broken?
I think if he had invited people to his MP's office to conduct private business, you would be right.
He connected via zoom.
If he was using his own computing resources, I don't think he has done anything wrong.
An interesting one. Under English law everything is allowed unless specifically prohibited. It seems likely that the rules over use of Parliamentary offices was not written with zoom in mind, and probably does not mention it. I expect it says something like, "Parliamentary offices may not be used to conduct private business."
That wording would seem to preclude using the office to connect to zoom calls, but you could see that if the wording was more specific that it might only cover physical in person meetings.
To trigger Article 16 while still supporting the Good Friday agreement is to reject both available options. It is to campaign under the slogan “Reality? No thank you!” And this is indeed, as Sir John says, unconservative.
There is a parallel here with the Paterson affair. A group of very self-confident people managed to persuade the rest of the party to act as if Paterson had not done what he absolutely had done. Everyone was persuaded to treat the most ludicrous “dog ate my homework” defence as if the accused was Dreyfus. It is an object lesson in the deleterious consequences of ignoring reality.
The reason why the prime minister agreed to the protocol is that he thought he would be much stronger fighting an election with a withdrawal agreement than offering a no-deal Brexit. And he was correct. Doing that deal was central to the result. It is not just that there were some Conservative-inclined Remainers who would not have voted for a no-deal party. That might have been a relatively small group. It is that large numbers of voters wanted to get the whole thing over with, tie up the loose ends, get on with life. It is these people who will feel bemused and perhaps betrayed if the whole saga begins again. As it might well if we trigger Article 16.
The government has argued that the Northern Ireland protocol has had unexpected consequences. That is flatly not true. That it involved a border in the Irish Sea and regulatory obstacles for Northern Ireland was entirely obvious when it was signed. Indeed it was the subject of extensive public debate.
If the Conservative Party no longer thinks our international agreements matter or that our word as a country is important then, really, what is it? What has it become?
Naah. Triggering A16 is literally the end of the process. We hold all the cards. There will be no trade war. Huzzah for Boris!
Quite right.
Sir John is delusional and has never reconciled to Brexit. The dying gasp of people who can't accept Brexit should be ignored and the government should plow on with Article 16 because there is no alternative.
I think the problem lies in the fact that most UK citizens still dont know what BREXIT is... what is the end-state of our relationship with our European neighbours and friends, so there is no vision "to accept"....
Mr. Gate, problem is that if somebody has a great career and doesn't want to be utterly out of the game for an unspecified period of time (and to have a ready fall-back if they do fail to be re-elected) it seems unreasonable to totally ban such a thing.
Especially when every single minister and shadow minister has two jobs (MP and being/shadowing a minister).
Anyone who has been a couple of hours a week part time as an MP for a decade (say) will be "out of the game".
On the other hand, they get hired at management level, for their contacts in politics.
On Cox, if it's just a case of him being sat in his parl office using the computer etc to do the side work, I can't get that worked up about it. If any taxpayer funded aides had been used to assist with that work, then I'd be pretty cross - even if he was using taxpayer funded printing etc. But I don't really see here how the taxpayer loses out any more than if he did his business fom Starbucks.
Of course, if it is against the rules then he has a case to answer, but - as per the comments reported by rottenborough - it seems to be a bit of a grey area. If you're permitted second jobs and you're in your office doing MP work when a meeting is scheduled by video call, what is gained by you stepping outside?
It's interesting the number across the political spectrum (including myself) posting the same comment. The focus on this is wrong. If there is a break in the rules it appears technical.
It sounds like the rules are out of date and apply to the days before the office was mobile. @Sandpit did a good post I thought.
Cox is a side play. But it adds to the "one rule for us, another for them" narrative which is fuelling this story. Its Day 11 now - anyone care to suggest how long it goes on?
Yes the focus on Cox seems to be along the lines of the size of his pay packet, Caribbean, how many hours worked, etc not on whether he broke any rules really. Can't get him on the first three so go for a technical rule seems to be the plan. The 'how many hours' is a better focus, but that is not against the rules and a lot more across the house may fall foul of that.
Dear me. We are at risk today of being drowned - not by the rising seas caused by climate change - but a veritable tsunami of crocodile tears, especially from those who poo-poohed those of us who pointed out last year the problems with how the government was operating - over contracts and much else.
I distinctly recall writing headers pointing out the issues - specifically, conflicts of interest. And the problem with automatically defending bad behaviour if it was done by your side. And much else besides.
And the response was " it's an emergency" and "no we can't possibly take the 5 minutes needed to declare a conflict of interest or do some accelerated due diligence" and "what's wrong with VIP lanes for friends of the PM and Ministers" and "don't be so moralistic or high-minded" etc etc.
And here we are with the shit hitting the fan as it was always going to do, as plenty of people warned.
You can have all the rules you want but if people refuse to accept they apply to them because they know that their ultimate boss won't enforce them then there is damn all you can do. A good culture comes from the top. And at the top we have a PM who could not care less about these matters. This is not a surprise. Tory MPs and Tory party members were warned about this long before they elected him. They chose to ignore those warnings. Voters did too So now they are getting what they voted for.
We can ask lots of questions about why MPs find it so hard to do the right thing.
We might also ask why it is that voters don't care enough about these matters to ensure that MPs do the right thing. If voters cared about this enough to change their votes then MPs would pretty soon change. They don't. So MPs look at the 80-seat majority and their large individual majorities and safe seats and think that this does not really matter very much to voters.
And those who point out that this hubristic "we are the masters now" approach leads to poor governance and corruption and a careless approach to spending taxpayers' money and the appointment of inadequate and incompetents to important posts and a general Italianisation of our public sphere get ignored or criticised.
Until those at the top take it seriously, until voters take it seriously this stuff will keep on happening.
It's a change of heart which is needed. Not simply a change in the rules.
I can cope with emergency contracts. What I object to is that being used as an excuse for everything that followed:
Contract awarded without tender not to expert company but to one founded last week by a Tory. Lets understand how / why that decision was made to avoid it in the next emergency
Contract awarded where vast sums (so often a £107m contract) were paid for equipment that was delivered faulty / not at all. Lets understand how we have paid for something we haven't received or can't use with no ability to claw back the money
Contract awarded with clear conflict of interest. We can have no future repeat of the "VIP channel" where top Tories lobby to have emergency 9-figure contracts awarded to top Tories
Contracts awarded on top of contracts on top of contracts. Its questionable enough awarding a contract worth double the value of a business even if they are in that field (unlike some others). Its then awarding procurement contracts on top then storage contracts on top. A transport company paid to transport stuff they have been paid to produce which turns out to be overprices usuable crap which the company then wins a further contract to store. Really?
Lets pick these apart, get our money back where the contract hasn't been fulfilled and learn the lessons.
Good morning
I agree with @Cyclefree and yourself and I suppose it was ever thus, and it is evident throughout local government as well
I am not persuaded about Cox but IDS needs to answer the allegations, but on all of this there has been a lot written over the last few days which does seem to be from guilty until proved innocent
Paterson was found guilty, and through Boris need to be liked and inability to follow the correct course he has opened this Pandora box
He is clearly not suitable to be PM but he does have a very loyal following and I am not at all certain he will be leaving his post anytime soon unless he suffers loss of the by elections and falling polling
I have a lot of respect for Chris Bryant and I hope some of the confrontational politics can be moderated to enable genuine cross party talks to resolve these serious issues
Acting as a consultant while an MP should be banned, and outside work permitted where it does not impact the hours worked as an MP
Re Duck house, it seemed to take the heat off the odd claims from Treasury Ministers. IRIC Kitty Ussher had claimed for extensive kitchen redevelopments, and Alistair Darling had flipped his second home. At the time I thought that Treasury Ministers were making expense claims which were unlikely to be necessary for their work. I also wondered why Darling was encouraged to leave The Faculty of Advocates.
Shredding Tony Blair's records didn't seem to be accidental.
As for Boris Johnson, he like Churchill seems to be happy for others to help him live in a style to which he is accustomed, and like Churchill he has been willing to have a lucrative second career in journalism, allied to a cavalier attitude to expenses.
Shredding Tony Blair's expenses records at a time when a High Court action was likely was done on the instructions of the Speaker Michael Martin, though.
Which was a separate issue of Governance from money-farming via the expenses scheme.
It may well be that Cox hasn't broken any significant rules and is given a clean bill of health, though if I were one of his constituents I'd be pretty cheesed off that he spends so little time representing me in Parliament.
But isn't the story really about greed? Here's a chap earning £82k for his "main" (ha ha) job, and yet raking in hundreds of thousands of pounds from his "second" jobs, money that over 99% of voters can only dream of, and yet is still sufficiently stingy to make a claim of 49p on expenses for some milk (yes, I know that was some years ago)?
If he was Secretary of State for XXX he would spend an equally small part of his time representing his constituents in Parliament.
Yes but it's well understood that the trade off for having a minister as an MP is the corresponding influence they gain. They won't be able to raise your case in the House but they can have a chat with the right minister after Cabinet. Cox's second job isn't going to help his constituents unless their problem is a planning dispute in the British Virgin Islands or something.
That is true but he does/has attended the House hasn't he, although this past 18 months it's all gone to cock a bit.
Yes I actually agree that the Cox thing is potentially not as damaging as the IDS allegations. It maybe that Cox is such an efficient powerhouse that he's able to represent his constituents effectively and work for the BVI government. Only his constituents can decide that.
We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the main scandal here is lobbying and that's what the IDS allegations seem to be if true.
Dear me. We are at risk today of being drowned - not by the rising seas caused by climate change - but a veritable tsunami of crocodile tears, especially from those who poo-poohed those of us who pointed out last year the problems with how the government was operating - over contracts and much else.
I distinctly recall writing headers pointing out the issues - specifically, conflicts of interest. And the problem with automatically defending bad behaviour if it was done by your side. And much else besides.
And the response was " it's an emergency" and "no we can't possibly take the 5 minutes needed to declare a conflict of interest or do some accelerated due diligence" and "what's wrong with VIP lanes for friends of the PM and Ministers" and "don't be so moralistic or high-minded" etc etc.
And here we are with the shit hitting the fan as it was always going to do, as plenty of people warned.
You can have all the rules you want but if people refuse to accept they apply to them because they know that their ultimate boss won't enforce them then there is damn all you can do. A good culture comes from the top. And at the top we have a PM who could not care less about these matters. This is not a surprise. Tory MPs and Tory party members were warned about this long before they elected him. They chose to ignore those warnings. Voters did too So now they are getting what they voted for.
We can ask lots of questions about why MPs find it so hard to do the right thing.
We might also ask why it is that voters don't care enough about these matters to ensure that MPs do the right thing. If voters cared about this enough to change their votes then MPs would pretty soon change. They don't. So MPs look at the 80-seat majority and their large individual majorities and safe seats and think that this does not really matter very much to voters.
And those who point out that this hubristic "we are the masters now" approach leads to poor governance and corruption and a careless approach to spending taxpayers' money and the appointment of inadequate and incompetents to important posts and a general Italianisation of our public sphere get ignored or criticised.
Until those at the top take it seriously, until voters take it seriously this stuff will keep on happening.
It's a change of heart which is needed. Not simply a change in the rules.
I can cope with emergency contracts. What I object to is that being used as an excuse for everything that followed:
Contract awarded without tender not to expert company but to one founded last week by a Tory. Lets understand how / why that decision was made to avoid it in the next emergency
Contract awarded where vast sums (so often a £107m contract) were paid for equipment that was delivered faulty / not at all. Lets understand how we have paid for something we haven't received or can't use with no ability to claw back the money
Contract awarded with clear conflict of interest. We can have no future repeat of the "VIP channel" where top Tories lobby to have emergency 9-figure contracts awarded to top Tories
Contracts awarded on top of contracts on top of contracts. Its questionable enough awarding a contract worth double the value of a business even if they are in that field (unlike some others). Its then awarding procurement contracts on top then storage contracts on top. A transport company paid to transport stuff they have been paid to produce which turns out to be overprices usuable crap which the company then wins a further contract to store. Really?
Lets pick these apart, get our money back where the contract hasn't been fulfilled and learn the lessons.
Good morning
I agree with @Cyclefree and yourself and I suppose it was ever thus, and it is evident throughout local government as well
I am not persuaded about Cox but IDS needs to answer the allegations, but on all of this there has been a lot written over the last few days which does seem to be from guilty until proved innocent
Paterson was found guilty, and through Boris need to be liked and inability to follow the correct course he has opened this Pandora box
He is clearly not suitable to be PM but he does have a very loyal following and I am not at all certain he will be leaving his post anytime soon unless he suffers loss of the by elections and falling polling
I have a lot of respect for Chris Bryant and I hope some of the confrontational politics can be moderated to enable genuine cross party talks to resolve these serious issues
Acting as a consultant while an MP should be banned, and outside work permitted where it does not impacting the hours worked as an MP
Using Parliamentary estate for private business is a prima facie breach of the rules, is it not? So there is AIUI a very serious issue with Mr Cox [edit] which needs to be resolved.
To trigger Article 16 while still supporting the Good Friday agreement is to reject both available options. It is to campaign under the slogan “Reality? No thank you!” And this is indeed, as Sir John says, unconservative.
There is a parallel here with the Paterson affair. A group of very self-confident people managed to persuade the rest of the party to act as if Paterson had not done what he absolutely had done. Everyone was persuaded to treat the most ludicrous “dog ate my homework” defence as if the accused was Dreyfus. It is an object lesson in the deleterious consequences of ignoring reality.
The reason why the prime minister agreed to the protocol is that he thought he would be much stronger fighting an election with a withdrawal agreement than offering a no-deal Brexit. And he was correct. Doing that deal was central to the result. It is not just that there were some Conservative-inclined Remainers who would not have voted for a no-deal party. That might have been a relatively small group. It is that large numbers of voters wanted to get the whole thing over with, tie up the loose ends, get on with life. It is these people who will feel bemused and perhaps betrayed if the whole saga begins again. As it might well if we trigger Article 16.
The government has argued that the Northern Ireland protocol has had unexpected consequences. That is flatly not true. That it involved a border in the Irish Sea and regulatory obstacles for Northern Ireland was entirely obvious when it was signed. Indeed it was the subject of extensive public debate.
If the Conservative Party no longer thinks our international agreements matter or that our word as a country is important then, really, what is it? What has it become?
Naah. Triggering A16 is literally the end of the process. We hold all the cards. There will be no trade war. Huzzah for Boris!
Quite right.
Sir John is delusional and has never reconciled to Brexit. The dying gasp of people who can't accept Brexit should be ignored and the government should plow on with Article 16 because there is no alternative.
I think the problem lies in the fact that most UK citizens still dont know what BREXIT is... what is the end-state of our relationship with our European neighbours and friends, so there is no vision "to accept"....
Well essentially the TCA has provided the relationship between Britain and our neighbours and that's not really disputed.
The problem is the EU and Ireland especially foolhardily chose to get the NI solution resolved before the trade negotiations, when it should have always been the other way around. So there was a temporary fix in the Protocol made prior to the TCA . . . now that temporary fix should be superseded with a more permanent solution.
Its funny how so many of those who said four years ago we should agree to the backstop as it was only temporary (despite having no unilateral exit) are now horrified that the Protocol is being treated as temporary. I can only guess all that was said in bad faith by those who wanted the UK signing up to the backstop.
Re Duck house, it seemed to take the heat off the odd claims from Treasury Ministers. IRIC Kitty Ussher had claimed for extensive kitchen redevelopments, and Alistair Darling had flipped his second home. At the time I thought that Treasury Ministers were making expense claims which were unlikely to be necessary for their work. I also wondered why Darling was encouraged to leave The Faculty of Advocates.
Shredding Tony Blair's records didn't seem to be accidental.
As for Boris Johnson, he like Churchill seems to be happy for others to help him live in a style to which he is accustomed, and like Churchill he has been willing to have a lucrative second career in journalism, allied to a cavalier attitude to expenses.
Shredding Tony Blair's expenses records at a time when a High Court action was likely was done on the instructions of the Speaker Michael Martin, though.
Which was a separate issue of Governance from the laxity or regulatory capture of the expenses scheme, or the exploitation of that laxity via excessive or fiddle claims.
Yep. This is a Tory issue not a general MP issue. Almost all of the MPs making big money off 2nd jobs and consultancy are Conservative MPs.
So the Leader of the Opposition, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats and the Westminster Leader of the SNP who're all making big money off 2nd jobs are Tories now are they? 🤔
It may well be that Cox hasn't broken any significant rules and is given a clean bill of health, though if I were one of his constituents I'd be pretty cheesed off that he spends so little time representing me in Parliament.
But isn't the story really about greed? Here's a chap earning £82k for his "main" (ha ha) job, and yet raking in hundreds of thousands of pounds from his "second" jobs, money that over 99% of voters can only dream of, and yet is still sufficiently stingy to make a claim of 49p on expenses for some milk (yes, I know that was some years ago)?
If he was Secretary of State for XXX he would spend an equally small part of his time representing his constituents in Parliament.
Yes but it's well understood that the trade off for having a minister as an MP is the corresponding influence they gain. They won't be able to raise your case in the House but they can have a chat with the right minister after Cabinet. Cox's second job isn't going to help his constituents unless their problem is a planning dispute in the British Virgin Islands or something.
That is true but he does/has attended the House hasn't he, although this past 18 months it's all gone to cock a bit.
Yes I actually agree that the Cox thing is potentially not as damaging as the IDS allegations. It maybe that Cox is such an efficient powerhouse that he's able to represent his constituents effectively and work for the BVI government. Only his constituents can decide that.
We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the main scandal here is lobbying and that's what the IDS allegations seem to be if true.
Cox acts as a happy reminder of just how far detached the "one of us" Tories are from us. Nothing more. Its a pity - I genuinely used to enjoy his bravura performances as AG - that debate where he was roaring away at the dispatch box telling the assembled MPs that the parliament his government was in charge of was a disgrace and needed to be dissolved was truly special.
Sadly it seems I won't be able to use the headline 'Cox out!'
Cox, who is the MP for Torridge & West Devon, is understood to be determined to fight his corner and has told friends that there is “nothing new” in the reports. He is said to have privately dismissed calls for him to resign.
It will be dismissed as relatively minor, and certainly Cox seems to have been focused on because of the amount he has earned rather than any specific misbehaviour as this is the first actual such listed, but rules are rules, and parliamentary resources shouldn't be used for non parliamentary work. MPs get chided frequently about sending things on House of Commons letterhead which shouldn't be for example.
I bet Cox has broken no rules.
What did he do? It seems he may have connected by zoom to a meeting from his desk in his Parliamentary office. So, what resources did he use?
Assuming he is using his own computer, then I guess there is wear and tear on the chair where he parked his ample trouser seat, and slight abrasion of his desk by the base of his laptop.
This seems to me more trivial that using House of Commons letter paper, for which MPs seem to get regularly done for.
I bet there are no Parliamentary rules on zoom use.
The Commissioner will gleefully demonstrate that you are wrong.
So, please be specific. What rule do you think Cox has broken?
I think if he had invited people to his MP's office to conduct private business, you would be right.
He connected via zoom.
If he was using his own computing resources, I don't think he has done anything wrong.
An interesting one. Under English law everything is allowed unless specifically prohibited. It seems likely that the rules over use of Parliamentary offices was not written with zoom in mind, and probably does not mention it. I expect it says something like, "Parliamentary offices may not be used to conduct private business."
That wording would seem to preclude using the office to connect to zoom calls, but you could see that if the wording was more specific that it might only cover physical in person meetings.
Clearly one for the lawyers.
There was an episode of the West Wing where President Bartlett insist on making his daily phone calls to solicit donations from the White House Residence, since technically that isn't the "office", whereas the Oval Office is. Even though, since he is on the phone, no-one would know the difference.
Dear me. We are at risk today of being drowned - not by the rising seas caused by climate change - but a veritable tsunami of crocodile tears, especially from those who poo-poohed those of us who pointed out last year the problems with how the government was operating - over contracts and much else.
I distinctly recall writing headers pointing out the issues - specifically, conflicts of interest. And the problem with automatically defending bad behaviour if it was done by your side. And much else besides.
And the response was " it's an emergency" and "no we can't possibly take the 5 minutes needed to declare a conflict of interest or do some accelerated due diligence" and "what's wrong with VIP lanes for friends of the PM and Ministers" and "don't be so moralistic or high-minded" etc etc.
And here we are with the shit hitting the fan as it was always going to do, as plenty of people warned.
You can have all the rules you want but if people refuse to accept they apply to them because they know that their ultimate boss won't enforce them then there is damn all you can do. A good culture comes from the top. And at the top we have a PM who could not care less about these matters. This is not a surprise. Tory MPs and Tory party members were warned about this long before they elected him. They chose to ignore those warnings. Voters did too So now they are getting what they voted for.
We can ask lots of questions about why MPs find it so hard to do the right thing.
We might also ask why it is that voters don't care enough about these matters to ensure that MPs do the right thing. If voters cared about this enough to change their votes then MPs would pretty soon change. They don't. So MPs look at the 80-seat majority and their large individual majorities and safe seats and think that this does not really matter very much to voters.
And those who point out that this hubristic "we are the masters now" approach leads to poor governance and corruption and a careless approach to spending taxpayers' money and the appointment of inadequate and incompetents to important posts and a general Italianisation of our public sphere get ignored or criticised.
Until those at the top take it seriously, until voters take it seriously this stuff will keep on happening.
It's a change of heart which is needed. Not simply a change in the rules.
I can cope with emergency contracts. What I object to is that being used as an excuse for everything that followed:
Contract awarded without tender not to expert company but to one founded last week by a Tory. Lets understand how / why that decision was made to avoid it in the next emergency
Contract awarded where vast sums (so often a £107m contract) were paid for equipment that was delivered faulty / not at all. Lets understand how we have paid for something we haven't received or can't use with no ability to claw back the money
Contract awarded with clear conflict of interest. We can have no future repeat of the "VIP channel" where top Tories lobby to have emergency 9-figure contracts awarded to top Tories
Contracts awarded on top of contracts on top of contracts. Its questionable enough awarding a contract worth double the value of a business even if they are in that field (unlike some others). Its then awarding procurement contracts on top then storage contracts on top. A transport company paid to transport stuff they have been paid to produce which turns out to be overprices usuable crap which the company then wins a further contract to store. Really?
Lets pick these apart, get our money back where the contract hasn't been fulfilled and learn the lessons.
Good morning
I agree with @Cyclefree and yourself and I suppose it was ever thus, and it is evident throughout local government as well
I am not persuaded about Cox but IDS needs to answer the allegations, but on all of this there has been a lot written over the last few days which does seem to be from guilty until proved innocent
Paterson was found guilty, and through Boris need to be liked and inability to follow the correct course he has opened this Pandora box
He is clearly not suitable to be PM but he does have a very loyal following and I am not at all certain he will be leaving his post anytime soon unless he suffers loss of the by elections and falling polling
I have a lot of respect for Chris Bryant and I hope some of the confrontational politics can be moderated to enable genuine cross party talks to resolve these serious issues
Acting as a consultant while an MP should be banned, and outside work permitted where it does not impacting the hours worked as an MP
Using Parliamentary estate for private business is a prima facie breach of the rules, is it not? So there is AIUI a very serious issue with Mr Cox [edit] which needs to be resolved.
I would be very surprised if many other mps have not done the same, especially in lockdown
He has been referred to the Standards Commissioner but according to Sky it is likely to be seen as a very minor breach which he may have to apologise for
Morning all; morning call email from Mr Bush of the Staggers:
"But Cox’s Torridge and West Devon seat is a trickier prospect: it is rich in Tory-friendly demographics, but it has a history of Liberal Democrat success and the local Liberal Democrat party is still well-organised and active. A by-election in West Devon, whether as a result of a recall or if changes to how MPs conduct their business force Cox to choose between his legal work and his parliamentary career, would be altogether gnarlier than the contests in North Shropshire and Bexley.
Of course, the bigger problem for Boris Johnson is that the only way to put the toothpaste back in the tube may be to sharply limit MPs’ ability to engage in paid consultancies. This would leave large numbers of his backbenchers out of pocket, and for no reason other than a fight the Prime Minister didn’t need to pick and one he shows no sign of being able to finish without inflicting political damage on himself and financial damage on his MPs."
To trigger Article 16 while still supporting the Good Friday agreement is to reject both available options. It is to campaign under the slogan “Reality? No thank you!” And this is indeed, as Sir John says, unconservative.
There is a parallel here with the Paterson affair. A group of very self-confident people managed to persuade the rest of the party to act as if Paterson had not done what he absolutely had done. Everyone was persuaded to treat the most ludicrous “dog ate my homework” defence as if the accused was Dreyfus. It is an object lesson in the deleterious consequences of ignoring reality.
The reason why the prime minister agreed to the protocol is that he thought he would be much stronger fighting an election with a withdrawal agreement than offering a no-deal Brexit. And he was correct. Doing that deal was central to the result. It is not just that there were some Conservative-inclined Remainers who would not have voted for a no-deal party. That might have been a relatively small group. It is that large numbers of voters wanted to get the whole thing over with, tie up the loose ends, get on with life. It is these people who will feel bemused and perhaps betrayed if the whole saga begins again. As it might well if we trigger Article 16.
The government has argued that the Northern Ireland protocol has had unexpected consequences. That is flatly not true. That it involved a border in the Irish Sea and regulatory obstacles for Northern Ireland was entirely obvious when it was signed. Indeed it was the subject of extensive public debate.
If the Conservative Party no longer thinks our international agreements matter or that our word as a country is important then, really, what is it? What has it become?
Naah. Triggering A16 is literally the end of the process. We hold all the cards. There will be no trade war. Huzzah for Boris!
Quite right.
Sir John is delusional and has never reconciled to Brexit. The dying gasp of people who can't accept Brexit should be ignored and the government should plow on with Article 16 because there is no alternative.
ECJ oversight of SM rules as they apply to NI - are we agreed this is our acid test for who has "caved" and who has "won" with whatever the agreed outcome is after the inevitable row?
During the last great sleaze scandal that only happened once the tories had been given a right big kicking in the only poll which really matters. Sleaze of this same entitled nature directly fuelled the 1997 Labour landslide.
The arrogant dismissal of this as an issue, even by a handful of diehards on here, is glorious to read for all of us who loathe this Government. The more arrogant they are, the more the public will give them a kicking.
Morning all; morning call email from Mr Bush of the Staggers:
"But Cox’s Torridge and West Devon seat is a trickier prospect: it is rich in Tory-friendly demographics, but it has a history of Liberal Democrat success and the local Liberal Democrat party is still well-organised and active. A by-election in West Devon, whether as a result of a recall or if changes to how MPs conduct their business force Cox to choose between his legal work and his parliamentary career, would be altogether gnarlier than the contests in North Shropshire and Bexley.
Of course, the bigger problem for Boris Johnson is that the only way to put the toothpaste back in the tube may be to sharply limit MPs’ ability to engage in paid consultancies. This would leave large numbers of his backbenchers out of pocket, and for no reason other than a fight the Prime Minister didn’t need to pick and one he shows no sign of being able to finish without inflicting political damage on himself and financial damage on his MPs."
Dear me. We are at risk today of being drowned - not by the rising seas caused by climate change - but a veritable tsunami of crocodile tears, especially from those who poo-poohed those of us who pointed out last year the problems with how the government was operating - over contracts and much else.
I distinctly recall writing headers pointing out the issues - specifically, conflicts of interest. And the problem with automatically defending bad behaviour if it was done by your side. And much else besides.
And the response was " it's an emergency" and "no we can't possibly take the 5 minutes needed to declare a conflict of interest or do some accelerated due diligence" and "what's wrong with VIP lanes for friends of the PM and Ministers" and "don't be so moralistic or high-minded" etc etc.
And here we are with the shit hitting the fan as it was always going to do, as plenty of people warned.
You can have all the rules you want but if people refuse to accept they apply to them because they know that their ultimate boss won't enforce them then there is damn all you can do. A good culture comes from the top. And at the top we have a PM who could not care less about these matters. This is not a surprise. Tory MPs and Tory party members were warned about this long before they elected him. They chose to ignore those warnings. Voters did too So now they are getting what they voted for.
We can ask lots of questions about why MPs find it so hard to do the right thing.
We might also ask why it is that voters don't care enough about these matters to ensure that MPs do the right thing. If voters cared about this enough to change their votes then MPs would pretty soon change. They don't. So MPs look at the 80-seat majority and their large individual majorities and safe seats and think that this does not really matter very much to voters.
And those who point out that this hubristic "we are the masters now" approach leads to poor governance and corruption and a careless approach to spending taxpayers' money and the appointment of inadequate and incompetents to important posts and a general Italianisation of our public sphere get ignored or criticised.
Until those at the top take it seriously, until voters take it seriously this stuff will keep on happening.
It's a change of heart which is needed. Not simply a change in the rules.
I can cope with emergency contracts. What I object to is that being used as an excuse for everything that followed:
Contract awarded without tender not to expert company but to one founded last week by a Tory. Lets understand how / why that decision was made to avoid it in the next emergency
Contract awarded where vast sums (so often a £107m contract) were paid for equipment that was delivered faulty / not at all. Lets understand how we have paid for something we haven't received or can't use with no ability to claw back the money
Contract awarded with clear conflict of interest. We can have no future repeat of the "VIP channel" where top Tories lobby to have emergency 9-figure contracts awarded to top Tories
Contracts awarded on top of contracts on top of contracts. Its questionable enough awarding a contract worth double the value of a business even if they are in that field (unlike some others). Its then awarding procurement contracts on top then storage contracts on top. A transport company paid to transport stuff they have been paid to produce which turns out to be overprices usuable crap which the company then wins a further contract to store. Really?
Lets pick these apart, get our money back where the contract hasn't been fulfilled and learn the lessons.
Good morning
I agree with @Cyclefree and yourself and I suppose it was ever thus, and it is evident throughout local government as well
I am not persuaded about Cox but IDS needs to answer the allegations, but on all of this there has been a lot written over the last few days which does seem to be from guilty until proved innocent
Paterson was found guilty, and through Boris need to be liked and inability to follow the correct course he has opened this Pandora box
He is clearly not suitable to be PM but he does have a very loyal following and I am not at all certain he will be leaving his post anytime soon unless he suffers loss of the by elections and falling polling
I have a lot of respect for Chris Bryant and I hope some of the confrontational politics can be moderated to enable genuine cross party talks to resolve these serious issues
Acting as a consultant while an MP should be banned, and outside work permitted where it does not impacting the hours worked as an MP
Consultant to whom? And what is a "consultant"?
Charities, businesses, Traddes Unions? What about unpaid (and therefore untransparent) consultancy?
One of the more interesting aspects of the "Alliance for Lobbying Transparency" (seems to have rebranded) is that they seemed to want their member organisations to be less regulated.
To trigger Article 16 while still supporting the Good Friday agreement is to reject both available options. It is to campaign under the slogan “Reality? No thank you!” And this is indeed, as Sir John says, unconservative.
There is a parallel here with the Paterson affair. A group of very self-confident people managed to persuade the rest of the party to act as if Paterson had not done what he absolutely had done. Everyone was persuaded to treat the most ludicrous “dog ate my homework” defence as if the accused was Dreyfus. It is an object lesson in the deleterious consequences of ignoring reality.
The reason why the prime minister agreed to the protocol is that he thought he would be much stronger fighting an election with a withdrawal agreement than offering a no-deal Brexit. And he was correct. Doing that deal was central to the result. It is not just that there were some Conservative-inclined Remainers who would not have voted for a no-deal party. That might have been a relatively small group. It is that large numbers of voters wanted to get the whole thing over with, tie up the loose ends, get on with life. It is these people who will feel bemused and perhaps betrayed if the whole saga begins again. As it might well if we trigger Article 16.
The government has argued that the Northern Ireland protocol has had unexpected consequences. That is flatly not true. That it involved a border in the Irish Sea and regulatory obstacles for Northern Ireland was entirely obvious when it was signed. Indeed it was the subject of extensive public debate.
If the Conservative Party no longer thinks our international agreements matter or that our word as a country is important then, really, what is it? What has it become?
Naah. Triggering A16 is literally the end of the process. We hold all the cards. There will be no trade war. Huzzah for Boris!
Quite right.
Sir John is delusional and has never reconciled to Brexit. The dying gasp of people who can't accept Brexit should be ignored and the government should plow on with Article 16 because there is no alternative.
ECJ oversight of SM rules as they apply to NI - are we agreed this is our acid test for who has "caved" and who has "won" with whatever the agreed outcome is after the inevitable row?
Since I'm expecting a climbdown from Brussels, I also expect there to be a face-saving figleaf they can point to. Some supposed role for the ECJ, but completely neutered and with Britain maintaining the right to invoke Article 16 if the ECJ does get involved (so its there but not there) is quite possible I think.
There are far more substantive issues to address. It wouldn't surprise me if the ECJ being the hill they're prepared to die on, means that the EU gives ground on every other issue while keeping a tokenistic role for the ECJ. Thus winning that battle but losing the war.
A bit like Barnier getting completely obsessed over fish at the end of the TCA negotiations and Frost making out like a bandit on all the important issues like governance, divergence etc
It may well be that Cox hasn't broken any significant rules and is given a clean bill of health, though if I were one of his constituents I'd be pretty cheesed off that he spends so little time representing me in Parliament.
But isn't the story really about greed? Here's a chap earning £82k for his "main" (ha ha) job, and yet raking in hundreds of thousands of pounds from his "second" jobs, money that over 99% of voters can only dream of, and yet is still sufficiently stingy to make a claim of 49p on expenses for some milk (yes, I know that was some years ago)?
If he was Secretary of State for XXX he would spend an equally small part of his time representing his constituents in Parliament.
Sure, but most of your time is spent on behalf of the country. It's the way the system was designed and has a feeling of natural justice about it.
George Grylls @georgegrylls Exclusive: Tory MP Laurence Robertson is paid £24,000 a year by the gambling industry.
He regularly uses parliamentary questions to demand ministers scrap tough new laws on gambling.
He denies any conflict of interest.
Some of the proposed new laws on gambling do need to be challenged with industry voices. Unfortunately one group that will not be heard are winning punters!
One other point I think is worth making. We're fixated on the rules for MPs to accept or not consultancies, but there's also the question of whether the companies involved have done something wrong by seeking to buy MPs in this way.
Would it not be covered by laws against bribery? If not why not?
Dear me. We are at risk today of being drowned - not by the rising seas caused by climate change - but a veritable tsunami of crocodile tears, especially from those who poo-poohed those of us who pointed out last year the problems with how the government was operating - over contracts and much else.
I distinctly recall writing headers pointing out the issues - specifically, conflicts of interest. And the problem with automatically defending bad behaviour if it was done by your side. And much else besides.
And the response was " it's an emergency" and "no we can't possibly take the 5 minutes needed to declare a conflict of interest or do some accelerated due diligence" and "what's wrong with VIP lanes for friends of the PM and Ministers" and "don't be so moralistic or high-minded" etc etc.
And here we are with the shit hitting the fan as it was always going to do, as plenty of people warned.
You can have all the rules you want but if people refuse to accept they apply to them because they know that their ultimate boss won't enforce them then there is damn all you can do. A good culture comes from the top. And at the top we have a PM who could not care less about these matters. This is not a surprise. Tory MPs and Tory party members were warned about this long before they elected him. They chose to ignore those warnings. Voters did too So now they are getting what they voted for.
We can ask lots of questions about why MPs find it so hard to do the right thing.
We might also ask why it is that voters don't care enough about these matters to ensure that MPs do the right thing. If voters cared about this enough to change their votes then MPs would pretty soon change. They don't. So MPs look at the 80-seat majority and their large individual majorities and safe seats and think that this does not really matter very much to voters.
And those who point out that this hubristic "we are the masters now" approach leads to poor governance and corruption and a careless approach to spending taxpayers' money and the appointment of inadequate and incompetents to important posts and a general Italianisation of our public sphere get ignored or criticised.
Until those at the top take it seriously, until voters take it seriously this stuff will keep on happening.
It's a change of heart which is needed. Not simply a change in the rules.
I can cope with emergency contracts. What I object to is that being used as an excuse for everything that followed:
Contract awarded without tender not to expert company but to one founded last week by a Tory. Lets understand how / why that decision was made to avoid it in the next emergency
Contract awarded where vast sums (so often a £107m contract) were paid for equipment that was delivered faulty / not at all. Lets understand how we have paid for something we haven't received or can't use with no ability to claw back the money
Contract awarded with clear conflict of interest. We can have no future repeat of the "VIP channel" where top Tories lobby to have emergency 9-figure contracts awarded to top Tories
Contracts awarded on top of contracts on top of contracts. Its questionable enough awarding a contract worth double the value of a business even if they are in that field (unlike some others). Its then awarding procurement contracts on top then storage contracts on top. A transport company paid to transport stuff they have been paid to produce which turns out to be overprices usuable crap which the company then wins a further contract to store. Really?
Lets pick these apart, get our money back where the contract hasn't been fulfilled and learn the lessons.
Good morning
I agree with @Cyclefree and yourself and I suppose it was ever thus, and it is evident throughout local government as well
I am not persuaded about Cox but IDS needs to answer the allegations, but on all of this there has been a lot written over the last few days which does seem to be from guilty until proved innocent
Paterson was found guilty, and through Boris need to be liked and inability to follow the correct course he has opened this Pandora box
He is clearly not suitable to be PM but he does have a very loyal following and I am not at all certain he will be leaving his post anytime soon unless he suffers loss of the by elections and falling polling
I have a lot of respect for Chris Bryant and I hope some of the confrontational politics can be moderated to enable genuine cross party talks to resolve these serious issues
Acting as a consultant while an MP should be banned, and outside work permitted where it does not impacting the hours worked as an MP
Using Parliamentary estate for private business is a prima facie breach of the rules, is it not? So there is AIUI a very serious issue with Mr Cox [edit] which needs to be resolved.
I would be very surprised if many other mps have not done the same, especially in lockdown
He has been referred to the Standards Commissioner but according to Sky it is likely to be seen as a very minor breach which he may have to apologise for
You're speculating about what D, E or F might or might not have done. And you are saying 'oh, it's Ok, they all do it'.
The situatiuon with Mr Cox is different. Alleged hard video evidence, remember. At a hypersensitive time.
Yep. This is a Tory issue not a general MP issue. Almost all of the MPs making big money off 2nd jobs and consultancy are Conservative MPs.
So the Leader of the Opposition, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats and the Westminster Leader of the SNP who're all making big money off 2nd jobs are Tories now are they? 🤔
The mail has been attacking Boris and others every day, but I noticed yesterday that they turned their guns on Starmer who's outside earnings since 2015 were £113,975
Yep. This is a Tory issue not a general MP issue. Almost all of the MPs making big money off 2nd jobs and consultancy are Conservative MPs.
So the Leader of the Opposition, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats and the Westminster Leader of the SNP who're all making big money off 2nd jobs are Tories now are they? 🤔
The mail has been attacking Boris and others every day, but I noticed yesterday that they turned their guns on Starmer who's outside earnings since 2015 were £113,975
George Grylls @georgegrylls Exclusive: Tory MP Laurence Robertson is paid £24,000 a year by the gambling industry.
He regularly uses parliamentary questions to demand ministers scrap tough new laws on gambling.
He denies any conflict of interest.
Unfortunately this will now take off like an Armando Iannouchi script. We're going to see some painfully funny examples of lobbying sleazes by politicians of all parties and we are going to see some outrageous cases of influence bringing direct reward.
Which keeps the narrative - critical for any story to become massive - firmly on point. Namely who leaned on who to ensure vast billions was wasted on dodgy Covid contracts, who paid for the Downing Street flat refurb and what that bough them in return, the flogged peerages etc etc etc.
We will see a few casualties on the opposition benches. But this could literally sink the government. If nothing else its "man of the people" representing blue collar England against the establishment will be over. And if you've been lied to about that what else have they lied to you about...?
Yep. This is a Tory issue not a general MP issue. Almost all of the MPs making big money off 2nd jobs and consultancy are Conservative MPs.
I love that the Mail has now ditched labelling this as 'MPs sleaze' and as from today is headlining it as:
"TORY SLEAZE LATEST"
The fact that there are others trousering on the other benches won't cut through, however true it is. The tories are in charge and somehow they always manage to do this kind of contemptuous sleaze a thousand times better than anyone else.
Yep. This is a Tory issue not a general MP issue. Almost all of the MPs making big money off 2nd jobs and consultancy are Conservative MPs.
So the Leader of the Opposition, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats and the Westminster Leader of the SNP who're all making big money off 2nd jobs are Tories now are they? 🤔
Ho ho. But seriously, that you're reduced to this observation rather confirms the point.
Yep. This is a Tory issue not a general MP issue. Almost all of the MPs making big money off 2nd jobs and consultancy are Conservative MPs.
From my own experience I can tell you that if there is an MP or ex MP on the payroll of a finance or consultancy firm for meetings with investors, 95% of the time it will be a Tory.
Morning all; morning call email from Mr Bush of the Staggers:
"But Cox’s Torridge and West Devon seat is a trickier prospect: it is rich in Tory-friendly demographics, but it has a history of Liberal Democrat success and the local Liberal Democrat party is still well-organised and active. A by-election in West Devon, whether as a result of a recall or if changes to how MPs conduct their business force Cox to choose between his legal work and his parliamentary career, would be altogether gnarlier than the contests in North Shropshire and Bexley.
Of course, the bigger problem for Boris Johnson is that the only way to put the toothpaste back in the tube may be to sharply limit MPs’ ability to engage in paid consultancies. This would leave large numbers of his backbenchers out of pocket, and for no reason other than a fight the Prime Minister didn’t need to pick and one he shows no sign of being able to finish without inflicting political damage on himself and financial damage on his MPs."
Didnt BJ sack Cox - the two dont get on at all.
I think so too - but if Mr Cox goes the pressure on Mr J and other MPs will remain. It will however be worse in the short term for Mr J if Mr Cox remains. Be interesting to see what happens with Mr Cox.
Dear me. We are at risk today of being drowned - not by the rising seas caused by climate change - but a veritable tsunami of crocodile tears, especially from those who poo-poohed those of us who pointed out last year the problems with how the government was operating - over contracts and much else.
I distinctly recall writing headers pointing out the issues - specifically, conflicts of interest. And the problem with automatically defending bad behaviour if it was done by your side. And much else besides.
And the response was " it's an emergency" and "no we can't possibly take the 5 minutes needed to declare a conflict of interest or do some accelerated due diligence" and "what's wrong with VIP lanes for friends of the PM and Ministers" and "don't be so moralistic or high-minded" etc etc.
And here we are with the shit hitting the fan as it was always going to do, as plenty of people warned.
You can have all the rules you want but if people refuse to accept they apply to them because they know that their ultimate boss won't enforce them then there is damn all you can do. A good culture comes from the top. And at the top we have a PM who could not care less about these matters. This is not a surprise. Tory MPs and Tory party members were warned about this long before they elected him. They chose to ignore those warnings. Voters did too So now they are getting what they voted for.
We can ask lots of questions about why MPs find it so hard to do the right thing.
We might also ask why it is that voters don't care enough about these matters to ensure that MPs do the right thing. If voters cared about this enough to change their votes then MPs would pretty soon change. They don't. So MPs look at the 80-seat majority and their large individual majorities and safe seats and think that this does not really matter very much to voters.
And those who point out that this hubristic "we are the masters now" approach leads to poor governance and corruption and a careless approach to spending taxpayers' money and the appointment of inadequate and incompetents to important posts and a general Italianisation of our public sphere get ignored or criticised.
Until those at the top take it seriously, until voters take it seriously this stuff will keep on happening.
It's a change of heart which is needed. Not simply a change in the rules.
I can cope with emergency contracts. What I object to is that being used as an excuse for everything that followed:
Contract awarded without tender not to expert company but to one founded last week by a Tory. Lets understand how / why that decision was made to avoid it in the next emergency
Contract awarded where vast sums (so often a £107m contract) were paid for equipment that was delivered faulty / not at all. Lets understand how we have paid for something we haven't received or can't use with no ability to claw back the money
Contract awarded with clear conflict of interest. We can have no future repeat of the "VIP channel" where top Tories lobby to have emergency 9-figure contracts awarded to top Tories
Contracts awarded on top of contracts on top of contracts. Its questionable enough awarding a contract worth double the value of a business even if they are in that field (unlike some others). Its then awarding procurement contracts on top then storage contracts on top. A transport company paid to transport stuff they have been paid to produce which turns out to be overprices usuable crap which the company then wins a further contract to store. Really?
Lets pick these apart, get our money back where the contract hasn't been fulfilled and learn the lessons.
Good morning
I agree with @Cyclefree and yourself and I suppose it was ever thus, and it is evident throughout local government as well
I am not persuaded about Cox but IDS needs to answer the allegations, but on all of this there has been a lot written over the last few days which does seem to be from guilty until proved innocent
Paterson was found guilty, and through Boris need to be liked and inability to follow the correct course he has opened this Pandora box
He is clearly not suitable to be PM but he does have a very loyal following and I am not at all certain he will be leaving his post anytime soon unless he suffers loss of the by elections and falling polling
I have a lot of respect for Chris Bryant and I hope some of the confrontational politics can be moderated to enable genuine cross party talks to resolve these serious issues
Acting as a consultant while an MP should be banned, and outside work permitted where it does not impacting the hours worked as an MP
Using Parliamentary estate for private business is a prima facie breach of the rules, is it not? So there is AIUI a very serious issue with Mr Cox [edit] which needs to be resolved.
I would be very surprised if many other mps have not done the same, especially in lockdown
He has been referred to the Standards Commissioner but according to Sky it is likely to be seen as a very minor breach which he may have to apologise for
I agree this breach of the rules is relatively minor and doesn't really deserve much more than a slap on the wrist unless he was making a habit of it.
The other equally minor breach of the rules would be if Cox used the parliamentary wifi as I assume it is for 'personal use only' - certainly that's true for gov wifi elsewhere. He may not have done so as I'm sure as a top QC he can afford to use the data on his phone for video conferences.
George Grylls @georgegrylls Exclusive: Tory MP Laurence Robertson is paid £24,000 a year by the gambling industry.
He regularly uses parliamentary questions to demand ministers scrap tough new laws on gambling.
He denies any conflict of interest.
Some of the proposed new laws on gambling do need to be challenged with industry voices. Unfortunately one group that will not be heard are winning punters!
If there were to be one simple change I would make to the gambling industry, which would be hated by the gambling industry, it would be that the bookies would be forbidden from restricting stakes or restricting offers from winning punters.
If the bookies want to offer "free bets" etc to entice people into gambling they should be forced to offer them to all who want to bet, not just those who bet and lose. If they want to offer stakes to losing punters, those same stakes should be available to winning punters. And if they're going to stake limit winning punters that's fine, so long as they stake limit the entire market including losing punters.
Being able to fleece losing punters but closing the door on winning ones shouldn't be legal if you hold a gambling licence.
To trigger Article 16 while still supporting the Good Friday agreement is to reject both available options. It is to campaign under the slogan “Reality? No thank you!” And this is indeed, as Sir John says, unconservative.
There is a parallel here with the Paterson affair. A group of very self-confident people managed to persuade the rest of the party to act as if Paterson had not done what he absolutely had done. Everyone was persuaded to treat the most ludicrous “dog ate my homework” defence as if the accused was Dreyfus. It is an object lesson in the deleterious consequences of ignoring reality.
The reason why the prime minister agreed to the protocol is that he thought he would be much stronger fighting an election with a withdrawal agreement than offering a no-deal Brexit. And he was correct. Doing that deal was central to the result. It is not just that there were some Conservative-inclined Remainers who would not have voted for a no-deal party. That might have been a relatively small group. It is that large numbers of voters wanted to get the whole thing over with, tie up the loose ends, get on with life. It is these people who will feel bemused and perhaps betrayed if the whole saga begins again. As it might well if we trigger Article 16.
The government has argued that the Northern Ireland protocol has had unexpected consequences. That is flatly not true. That it involved a border in the Irish Sea and regulatory obstacles for Northern Ireland was entirely obvious when it was signed. Indeed it was the subject of extensive public debate.
If the Conservative Party no longer thinks our international agreements matter or that our word as a country is important then, really, what is it? What has it become?
Naah. Triggering A16 is literally the end of the process. We hold all the cards. There will be no trade war. Huzzah for Boris!
Quite right.
Sir John is delusional and has never reconciled to Brexit. The dying gasp of people who can't accept Brexit should be ignored and the government should plow on with Article 16 because there is no alternative.
ECJ oversight of SM rules as they apply to NI - are we agreed this is our acid test for who has "caved" and who has "won" with whatever the agreed outcome is after the inevitable row?
Since I'm expecting a climbdown from Brussels, I also expect there to be a face-saving figleaf they can point to. Some supposed role for the ECJ, but completely neutered and with Britain maintaining the right to invoke Article 16 if the ECJ does get involved (so its there but not there) is quite possible I think.
There are far more substantive issues to address. It wouldn't surprise me if the ECJ being the hill they're prepared to die on, means that the EU gives ground on every other issue while keeping a tokenistic role for the ECJ. Thus winning that battle but losing the war.
A bit like Barnier getting completely obsessed over fish at the end of the TCA negotiations and Frost making out like a bandit on all the important issues like governance, divergence etc
For my money, the figleaf will be a continunig role for the ECR. Given how limited that role already is, that's why I think Lord Frost raised it months ago.
I'm not clear how wide any settlement will be - will it include fishing permits, City equivalence, NI Trusted Trader, Horizon, recognition of Court Rulings? There's a whole lot of stuff that needs to be changed or unpicked for a best-possible relationship, but also the EuCo self-image obsession to acknowledge.
Yep. This is a Tory issue not a general MP issue. Almost all of the MPs making big money off 2nd jobs and consultancy are Conservative MPs.
So the Leader of the Opposition, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats and the Westminster Leader of the SNP who're all making big money off 2nd jobs are Tories now are they? 🤔
The mail has been attacking Boris and others every day, but I noticed yesterday that they turned their guns on Starmer who's outside earnings since 2015 were £113,975
Tried for years. Remember the donkeys?
If you are referring to the non story about Sir Keir buying some land for his Mum so that she could find a home for old donkeys, was that in the Mail or the Mail on Sunday? The papers have different editors with different agendas (and the editors hate one another according to Private Eye).
Yep. This is a Tory issue not a general MP issue. Almost all of the MPs making big money off 2nd jobs and consultancy are Conservative MPs.
So the Leader of the Opposition, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats and the Westminster Leader of the SNP who're all making big money off 2nd jobs are Tories now are they? 🤔
Ho ho. But seriously, that you're reduced to this observation rather confirms the point.
No it really doesn't. The fact that 100% of the leaders of the main opposition parties (plus the leader of the Liberal Democrats too) are doing this shows its endemic in Westminster as a whole.
Of course there'd be more Tories doing it, because there are more Tories. But its an all MPs thing not a Tories thing.
Yep. This is a Tory issue not a general MP issue. Almost all of the MPs making big money off 2nd jobs and consultancy are Conservative MPs.
So the Leader of the Opposition, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats and the Westminster Leader of the SNP who're all making big money off 2nd jobs are Tories now are they? 🤔
The mail has been attacking Boris and others every day, but I noticed yesterday that they turned their guns on Starmer who's outside earnings since 2015 were £113,975
Tried for years. Remember the donkeys?
If you are referring to the non story about Sir Keir buying some land for his Mum so that she could find a home for old donkeys, was that in the Mail or the Mail on Sunday? The papers have different editors with different agendas (and the editors hate one another according to Private Eye).
( Quite right. It seems to have been the MoS with the donkeys. (But that was May 2020. Not sure about the editorial situation then - but quite happy to accept you are right on that even back then.)
George Grylls @georgegrylls Exclusive: Tory MP Laurence Robertson is paid £24,000 a year by the gambling industry.
He regularly uses parliamentary questions to demand ministers scrap tough new laws on gambling.
He denies any conflict of interest.
Some of the proposed new laws on gambling do need to be challenged with industry voices. Unfortunately one group that will not be heard are winning punters!
If there were to be one simple change I would make to the gambling industry, which would be hated by the gambling industry, it would be that the bookies would be forbidden from restricting stakes or restricting offers from winning punters.
If the bookies want to offer "free bets" etc to entice people into gambling they should be forced to offer them to all who want to bet, not just those who bet and lose. If they want to offer stakes to losing punters, those same stakes should be available to winning punters. And if they're going to stake limit winning punters that's fine, so long as they stake limit the entire market including losing punters.
Being able to fleece losing punters but closing the door on winning ones shouldn't be legal if you hold a gambling licence.
Not very libertarian of you Philip. They are private businesses they can and should do what they like.
Dear me. We are at risk today of being drowned - not by the rising seas caused by climate change - but a veritable tsunami of crocodile tears, especially from those who poo-poohed those of us who pointed out last year the problems with how the government was operating - over contracts and much else.
I distinctly recall writing headers pointing out the issues - specifically, conflicts of interest. And the problem with automatically defending bad behaviour if it was done by your side. And much else besides.
And the response was " it's an emergency" and "no we can't possibly take the 5 minutes needed to declare a conflict of interest or do some accelerated due diligence" and "what's wrong with VIP lanes for friends of the PM and Ministers" and "don't be so moralistic or high-minded" etc etc.
And here we are with the shit hitting the fan as it was always going to do, as plenty of people warned.
You can have all the rules you want but if people refuse to accept they apply to them because they know that their ultimate boss won't enforce them then there is damn all you can do. A good culture comes from the top. And at the top we have a PM who could not care less about these matters. This is not a surprise. Tory MPs and Tory party members were warned about this long before they elected him. They chose to ignore those warnings. Voters did too So now they are getting what they voted for.
We can ask lots of questions about why MPs find it so hard to do the right thing.
We might also ask why it is that voters don't care enough about these matters to ensure that MPs do the right thing. If voters cared about this enough to change their votes then MPs would pretty soon change. They don't. So MPs look at the 80-seat majority and their large individual majorities and safe seats and think that this does not really matter very much to voters.
And those who point out that this hubristic "we are the masters now" approach leads to poor governance and corruption and a careless approach to spending taxpayers' money and the appointment of inadequate and incompetents to important posts and a general Italianisation of our public sphere get ignored or criticised.
Until those at the top take it seriously, until voters take it seriously this stuff will keep on happening.
It's a change of heart which is needed. Not simply a change in the rules.
I can cope with emergency contracts. What I object to is that being used as an excuse for everything that followed:
Contract awarded without tender not to expert company but to one founded last week by a Tory. Lets understand how / why that decision was made to avoid it in the next emergency
Contract awarded where vast sums (so often a £107m contract) were paid for equipment that was delivered faulty / not at all. Lets understand how we have paid for something we haven't received or can't use with no ability to claw back the money
Contract awarded with clear conflict of interest. We can have no future repeat of the "VIP channel" where top Tories lobby to have emergency 9-figure contracts awarded to top Tories
Contracts awarded on top of contracts on top of contracts. Its questionable enough awarding a contract worth double the value of a business even if they are in that field (unlike some others). Its then awarding procurement contracts on top then storage contracts on top. A transport company paid to transport stuff they have been paid to produce which turns out to be overprices usuable crap which the company then wins a further contract to store. Really?
Lets pick these apart, get our money back where the contract hasn't been fulfilled and learn the lessons.
Good morning
I agree with @Cyclefree and yourself and I suppose it was ever thus, and it is evident throughout local government as well
I am not persuaded about Cox but IDS needs to answer the allegations, but on all of this there has been a lot written over the last few days which does seem to be from guilty until proved innocent
Paterson was found guilty, and through Boris need to be liked and inability to follow the correct course he has opened this Pandora box
He is clearly not suitable to be PM but he does have a very loyal following and I am not at all certain he will be leaving his post anytime soon unless he suffers loss of the by elections and falling polling
I have a lot of respect for Chris Bryant and I hope some of the confrontational politics can be moderated to enable genuine cross party talks to resolve these serious issues
Acting as a consultant while an MP should be banned, and outside work permitted where it does not impacting the hours worked as an MP
Using Parliamentary estate for private business is a prima facie breach of the rules, is it not? So there is AIUI a very serious issue with Mr Cox [edit] which needs to be resolved.
I would be very surprised if many other mps have not done the same, especially in lockdown
He has been referred to the Standards Commissioner but according to Sky it is likely to be seen as a very minor breach which he may have to apologise for
You're speculating about what D, E or F might or might not have done. And you are saying 'oh, it's Ok, they all do it'.
The situatiuon with Mr Cox is different. Alleged hard video evidence, remember. At a hypersensitive time.
I am saying that Cox breach is minor and the video was shown on Sky
Are you saying Cox is the only MP to ever have conduced private business from their Commons Office
This MPs’ second jobs issue is tricky. In 1982-83, when John Smith was Shadow Energy Sec, I think I’m right in saying he made just one speech in the Commons, but spent several weeks in summer of 1983 as a QC in Scotland defending a man accused of murder. Was that right?
Yep. This is a Tory issue not a general MP issue. Almost all of the MPs making big money off 2nd jobs and consultancy are Conservative MPs.
From my own experience I can tell you that if there is an MP or ex MP on the payroll of a finance or consultancy firm for meetings with investors, 95% of the time it will be a Tory.
According to the Guardian
"The register of MPs’ interests shows that more than 90 out of 360 Tories have extra jobs on top of their work in parliament, compared with three from Labour. They are overwhelmingly older and 86% are men. The highest earners were all former cabinet ministers."
Jobs for that analysis is paid regular work, not unpaid roles or "ad hoc payments for journalism, speaking at events, training, lectures or surveys"
So it is a reasonably small number of MPs, mostly the older intake. If it were banned it seems unlikely to change the newer intake much. I would suggest capping it at 500 hours per year and taxing all MP additional job earnings at the highest marginal rate anyone in the country faces.
To trigger Article 16 while still supporting the Good Friday agreement is to reject both available options. It is to campaign under the slogan “Reality? No thank you!” And this is indeed, as Sir John says, unconservative.
There is a parallel here with the Paterson affair. A group of very self-confident people managed to persuade the rest of the party to act as if Paterson had not done what he absolutely had done. Everyone was persuaded to treat the most ludicrous “dog ate my homework” defence as if the accused was Dreyfus. It is an object lesson in the deleterious consequences of ignoring reality.
The reason why the prime minister agreed to the protocol is that he thought he would be much stronger fighting an election with a withdrawal agreement than offering a no-deal Brexit. And he was correct. Doing that deal was central to the result. It is not just that there were some Conservative-inclined Remainers who would not have voted for a no-deal party. That might have been a relatively small group. It is that large numbers of voters wanted to get the whole thing over with, tie up the loose ends, get on with life. It is these people who will feel bemused and perhaps betrayed if the whole saga begins again. As it might well if we trigger Article 16.
The government has argued that the Northern Ireland protocol has had unexpected consequences. That is flatly not true. That it involved a border in the Irish Sea and regulatory obstacles for Northern Ireland was entirely obvious when it was signed. Indeed it was the subject of extensive public debate.
If the Conservative Party no longer thinks our international agreements matter or that our word as a country is important then, really, what is it? What has it become?
Naah. Triggering A16 is literally the end of the process. We hold all the cards. There will be no trade war. Huzzah for Boris!
Quite right.
Sir John is delusional and has never reconciled to Brexit. The dying gasp of people who can't accept Brexit should be ignored and the government should plow on with Article 16 because there is no alternative.
ECJ oversight of SM rules as they apply to NI - are we agreed this is our acid test for who has "caved" and who has "won" with whatever the agreed outcome is after the inevitable row?
Since I'm expecting a climbdown from Brussels, I also expect there to be a face-saving figleaf they can point to. Some supposed role for the ECJ, but completely neutered and with Britain maintaining the right to invoke Article 16 if the ECJ does get involved (so its there but not there) is quite possible I think.
There are far more substantive issues to address. It wouldn't surprise me if the ECJ being the hill they're prepared to die on, means that the EU gives ground on every other issue while keeping a tokenistic role for the ECJ. Thus winning that battle but losing the war.
A bit like Barnier getting completely obsessed over fish at the end of the TCA negotiations and Frost making out like a bandit on all the important issues like governance, divergence etc
Ok, sorry, missed that. Thanks for reposting.
So you're rolling the pitch so as to be able to claim "We Win!" regardless. Which is the usual MO from you tbf. Never mind, it was worth a try.
Let's just pose another one before we get back to the more interesting and important topic of Johnson Tory Sleaze. Are we going to trigger Art 16?
If your answer is the inevitable "Yes, if the EU don't cave, but if they do cave, no" don't worry about typing it all out, you can just say "Bananas!" and I'll understand.
George Grylls @georgegrylls Exclusive: Tory MP Laurence Robertson is paid £24,000 a year by the gambling industry.
He regularly uses parliamentary questions to demand ministers scrap tough new laws on gambling.
He denies any conflict of interest.
Some of the proposed new laws on gambling do need to be challenged with industry voices. Unfortunately one group that will not be heard are winning punters!
Why? If the industry can't keep things properly under control (gambling addiction, money laundering via the design of their Fixed odds betting terminals) then the legislation is required to fix the abuses.
George Grylls @georgegrylls Exclusive: Tory MP Laurence Robertson is paid £24,000 a year by the gambling industry.
He regularly uses parliamentary questions to demand ministers scrap tough new laws on gambling.
He denies any conflict of interest.
Some of the proposed new laws on gambling do need to be challenged with industry voices. Unfortunately one group that will not be heard are winning punters!
If there were to be one simple change I would make to the gambling industry, which would be hated by the gambling industry, it would be that the bookies would be forbidden from restricting stakes or restricting offers from winning punters.
If the bookies want to offer "free bets" etc to entice people into gambling they should be forced to offer them to all who want to bet, not just those who bet and lose. If they want to offer stakes to losing punters, those same stakes should be available to winning punters. And if they're going to stake limit winning punters that's fine, so long as they stake limit the entire market including losing punters.
Being able to fleece losing punters but closing the door on winning ones shouldn't be legal if you hold a gambling licence.
Not very libertarian of you Philip. They are private businesses they can and should do what they like.
They're licenced businesses.
If you want it to be private businesses then scrap the requirement for licences. But if you're going to have licences then it should be a condition of the licence that they treat punters equitably.
Fleecing losing punters but restricting winning ones should be something that unlicensed criminals are doing, not legal and licensed bookies given a licence and approval of the Gambling Commission.
George Grylls @georgegrylls Exclusive: Tory MP Laurence Robertson is paid £24,000 a year by the gambling industry.
He regularly uses parliamentary questions to demand ministers scrap tough new laws on gambling.
He denies any conflict of interest.
Some of the proposed new laws on gambling do need to be challenged with industry voices. Unfortunately one group that will not be heard are winning punters!
If there were to be one simple change I would make to the gambling industry, which would be hated by the gambling industry, it would be that the bookies would be forbidden from restricting stakes or restricting offers from winning punters.
If the bookies want to offer "free bets" etc to entice people into gambling they should be forced to offer them to all who want to bet, not just those who bet and lose. If they want to offer stakes to losing punters, those same stakes should be available to winning punters. And if they're going to stake limit winning punters that's fine, so long as they stake limit the entire market including losing punters.
Being able to fleece losing punters but closing the door on winning ones shouldn't be legal if you hold a gambling licence.
Not very libertarian of you Philip. They are private businesses they can and should do what they like.
I wouldn't mind a nationalised exchange, MPs Bell and Shadsy in charge of market setting & settlement; 5% commission straight to the treasury, no restrictions on punters.
Dear me. We are at risk today of being drowned - not by the rising seas caused by climate change - but a veritable tsunami of crocodile tears, especially from those who poo-poohed those of us who pointed out last year the problems with how the government was operating - over contracts and much else.
I distinctly recall writing headers pointing out the issues - specifically, conflicts of interest. And the problem with automatically defending bad behaviour if it was done by your side. And much else besides.
And the response was " it's an emergency" and "no we can't possibly take the 5 minutes needed to declare a conflict of interest or do some accelerated due diligence" and "what's wrong with VIP lanes for friends of the PM and Ministers" and "don't be so moralistic or high-minded" etc etc.
And here we are with the shit hitting the fan as it was always going to do, as plenty of people warned.
You can have all the rules you want but if people refuse to accept they apply to them because they know that their ultimate boss won't enforce them then there is damn all you can do. A good culture comes from the top. And at the top we have a PM who could not care less about these matters. This is not a surprise. Tory MPs and Tory party members were warned about this long before they elected him. They chose to ignore those warnings. Voters did too So now they are getting what they voted for.
We can ask lots of questions about why MPs find it so hard to do the right thing.
We might also ask why it is that voters don't care enough about these matters to ensure that MPs do the right thing. If voters cared about this enough to change their votes then MPs would pretty soon change. They don't. So MPs look at the 80-seat majority and their large individual majorities and safe seats and think that this does not really matter very much to voters.
And those who point out that this hubristic "we are the masters now" approach leads to poor governance and corruption and a careless approach to spending taxpayers' money and the appointment of inadequate and incompetents to important posts and a general Italianisation of our public sphere get ignored or criticised.
Until those at the top take it seriously, until voters take it seriously this stuff will keep on happening.
It's a change of heart which is needed. Not simply a change in the rules.
I can cope with emergency contracts. What I object to is that being used as an excuse for everything that followed:
Contract awarded without tender not to expert company but to one founded last week by a Tory. Lets understand how / why that decision was made to avoid it in the next emergency
Contract awarded where vast sums (so often a £107m contract) were paid for equipment that was delivered faulty / not at all. Lets understand how we have paid for something we haven't received or can't use with no ability to claw back the money
Contract awarded with clear conflict of interest. We can have no future repeat of the "VIP channel" where top Tories lobby to have emergency 9-figure contracts awarded to top Tories
Contracts awarded on top of contracts on top of contracts. Its questionable enough awarding a contract worth double the value of a business even if they are in that field (unlike some others). Its then awarding procurement contracts on top then storage contracts on top. A transport company paid to transport stuff they have been paid to produce which turns out to be overprices usuable crap which the company then wins a further contract to store. Really?
Lets pick these apart, get our money back where the contract hasn't been fulfilled and learn the lessons.
Good morning
I agree with @Cyclefree and yourself and I suppose it was ever thus, and it is evident throughout local government as well
I am not persuaded about Cox but IDS needs to answer the allegations, but on all of this there has been a lot written over the last few days which does seem to be from guilty until proved innocent
Paterson was found guilty, and through Boris need to be liked and inability to follow the correct course he has opened this Pandora box
He is clearly not suitable to be PM but he does have a very loyal following and I am not at all certain he will be leaving his post anytime soon unless he suffers loss of the by elections and falling polling
I have a lot of respect for Chris Bryant and I hope some of the confrontational politics can be moderated to enable genuine cross party talks to resolve these serious issues
Acting as a consultant while an MP should be banned, and outside work permitted where it does not impacting the hours worked as an MP
Consultant to whom? And what is a "consultant"?
Charities, businesses, Traddes Unions? What about unpaid (and therefore untransparent) consultancy?
One of the more interesting aspects of the "Alliance for Lobbying Transparency" (seems to have rebranded) is that they seemed to want their member organisations to be less regulated.
My plan for the National Union of Boiler Makers* & Hedge Fund Owners looks better and better.... Originally for donations to political parties, but other uses are also good.
*I've made an actual steam boiler and had it tested as safe by a professional steam boiler tester.
George Grylls @georgegrylls Exclusive: Tory MP Laurence Robertson is paid £24,000 a year by the gambling industry.
He regularly uses parliamentary questions to demand ministers scrap tough new laws on gambling.
He denies any conflict of interest.
Some of the proposed new laws on gambling do need to be challenged with industry voices. Unfortunately one group that will not be heard are winning punters!
Why? If the industry can't keep things properly under control (gambling addiction, money laundering via the design of their Fixed odds betting terminals) then the legislation is required to fix the abuses.
Absolutely. Legislation is needed because the 2005 act was too permissive particularly on advertising. But getting the legislation right on an emotive subject does require working with the industry. Not being led by the industry or giving them everything they want, but working with them. All legislation is not equal or fit for purpose.
Last point for today is that it's worth remembering that the governing party always cops things worse. Diehard tories can rail and froth as much as they like but in the public consciousness it's their party who are suffering most from this and will continue to do so.
It's not helped by the sheer cavalier arrogance with which their party in Westminster and the British Virgin Islands have handled it.
Yep. This is a Tory issue not a general MP issue. Almost all of the MPs making big money off 2nd jobs and consultancy are Conservative MPs.
Yes, and that's the challenge for Labour. The fightback has already started. The Daily Mail, HYUFD, PT and Big G have already joined forces to try to persuade voters (and some PB readers) that it's a plague on all MPs houses, that they're all at it, they're all the same. But they're not. It will be a test for Labour communicators to convince the voting public that this is a Tory MP issue, not a generic MP issue.
George Grylls @georgegrylls Exclusive: Tory MP Laurence Robertson is paid £24,000 a year by the gambling industry.
He regularly uses parliamentary questions to demand ministers scrap tough new laws on gambling.
He denies any conflict of interest.
Some of the proposed new laws on gambling do need to be challenged with industry voices. Unfortunately one group that will not be heard are winning punters!
Why? If the industry can't keep things properly under control (gambling addiction, money laundering via the design of their Fixed odds betting terminals) then the legislation is required to fix the abuses.
Some of the proposals will make things worse not better though.
EG the "single view of customer" idea that rather than having data protection, bookies would share punters gambling history with each other in order to better identify "problem gamblers".
Except what is a "problem gambler"? Without saying so officially the bookies definition of a problem gambler is likely to be one that is winning, not one that is losing.
So if a the bookies are able to use this data to stake restrict or block from offers winning punters based on data from other bookies - thus being able to offer more tempting pulls to those who are genuinely problem gamblers, then that's going to make everything worse.
Dear me. We are at risk today of being drowned - not by the rising seas caused by climate change - but a veritable tsunami of crocodile tears, especially from those who poo-poohed those of us who pointed out last year the problems with how the government was operating - over contracts and much else.
I distinctly recall writing headers pointing out the issues - specifically, conflicts of interest. And the problem with automatically defending bad behaviour if it was done by your side. And much else besides.
And the response was " it's an emergency" and "no we can't possibly take the 5 minutes needed to declare a conflict of interest or do some accelerated due diligence" and "what's wrong with VIP lanes for friends of the PM and Ministers" and "don't be so moralistic or high-minded" etc etc.
And here we are with the shit hitting the fan as it was always going to do, as plenty of people warned.
You can have all the rules you want but if people refuse to accept they apply to them because they know that their ultimate boss won't enforce them then there is damn all you can do. A good culture comes from the top. And at the top we have a PM who could not care less about these matters. This is not a surprise. Tory MPs and Tory party members were warned about this long before they elected him. They chose to ignore those warnings. Voters did too So now they are getting what they voted for.
We can ask lots of questions about why MPs find it so hard to do the right thing.
We might also ask why it is that voters don't care enough about these matters to ensure that MPs do the right thing. If voters cared about this enough to change their votes then MPs would pretty soon change. They don't. So MPs look at the 80-seat majority and their large individual majorities and safe seats and think that this does not really matter very much to voters.
And those who point out that this hubristic "we are the masters now" approach leads to poor governance and corruption and a careless approach to spending taxpayers' money and the appointment of inadequate and incompetents to important posts and a general Italianisation of our public sphere get ignored or criticised.
Until those at the top take it seriously, until voters take it seriously this stuff will keep on happening.
It's a change of heart which is needed. Not simply a change in the rules.
I can cope with emergency contracts. What I object to is that being used as an excuse for everything that followed:
Contract awarded without tender not to expert company but to one founded last week by a Tory. Lets understand how / why that decision was made to avoid it in the next emergency
Contract awarded where vast sums (so often a £107m contract) were paid for equipment that was delivered faulty / not at all. Lets understand how we have paid for something we haven't received or can't use with no ability to claw back the money
Contract awarded with clear conflict of interest. We can have no future repeat of the "VIP channel" where top Tories lobby to have emergency 9-figure contracts awarded to top Tories
Contracts awarded on top of contracts on top of contracts. Its questionable enough awarding a contract worth double the value of a business even if they are in that field (unlike some others). Its then awarding procurement contracts on top then storage contracts on top. A transport company paid to transport stuff they have been paid to produce which turns out to be overprices usuable crap which the company then wins a further contract to store. Really?
Lets pick these apart, get our money back where the contract hasn't been fulfilled and learn the lessons.
Good morning
I agree with @Cyclefree and yourself and I suppose it was ever thus, and it is evident throughout local government as well
I am not persuaded about Cox but IDS needs to answer the allegations, but on all of this there has been a lot written over the last few days which does seem to be from guilty until proved innocent
Paterson was found guilty, and through Boris need to be liked and inability to follow the correct course he has opened this Pandora box
He is clearly not suitable to be PM but he does have a very loyal following and I am not at all certain he will be leaving his post anytime soon unless he suffers loss of the by elections and falling polling
I have a lot of respect for Chris Bryant and I hope some of the confrontational politics can be moderated to enable genuine cross party talks to resolve these serious issues
Acting as a consultant while an MP should be banned, and outside work permitted where it does not impacting the hours worked as an MP
Using Parliamentary estate for private business is a prima facie breach of the rules, is it not? So there is AIUI a very serious issue with Mr Cox [edit] which needs to be resolved.
I would be very surprised if many other mps have not done the same, especially in lockdown
He has been referred to the Standards Commissioner but according to Sky it is likely to be seen as a very minor breach which he may have to apologise for
You're speculating about what D, E or F might or might not have done. And you are saying 'oh, it's Ok, they all do it'.
The situatiuon with Mr Cox is different. Alleged hard video evidence, remember. At a hypersensitive time.
I am saying that Cox breach is minor and the video was shown on Sky
Are you saying Cox is the only MP to ever have conduced private business from their Commons Office
This MPs’ second jobs issue is tricky. In 1982-83, when John Smith was Shadow Energy Sec, I think I’m right in saying he made just one speech in the Commons, but spent several weeks in summer of 1983 as a QC in Scotland defending a man accused of murder. Was that right?
Not saying Mr Cox did: simply that it is alleged he did, with evidence of a kind which is visibly indicating his location.
Just because X does it doesn't mean it isn't against the rules.
John Smith: that example is a full 38 years old. Maybe in recess, too.
Dear me. We are at risk today of being drowned - not by the rising seas caused by climate change - but a veritable tsunami of crocodile tears, especially from those who poo-poohed those of us who pointed out last year the problems with how the government was operating - over contracts and much else.
I distinctly recall writing headers pointing out the issues - specifically, conflicts of interest. And the problem with automatically defending bad behaviour if it was done by your side. And much else besides.
And the response was " it's an emergency" and "no we can't possibly take the 5 minutes needed to declare a conflict of interest or do some accelerated due diligence" and "what's wrong with VIP lanes for friends of the PM and Ministers" and "don't be so moralistic or high-minded" etc etc.
And here we are with the shit hitting the fan as it was always going to do, as plenty of people warned.
You can have all the rules you want but if people refuse to accept they apply to them because they know that their ultimate boss won't enforce them then there is damn all you can do. A good culture comes from the top. And at the top we have a PM who could not care less about these matters. This is not a surprise. Tory MPs and Tory party members were warned about this long before they elected him. They chose to ignore those warnings. Voters did too So now they are getting what they voted for.
We can ask lots of questions about why MPs find it so hard to do the right thing.
We might also ask why it is that voters don't care enough about these matters to ensure that MPs do the right thing. If voters cared about this enough to change their votes then MPs would pretty soon change. They don't. So MPs look at the 80-seat majority and their large individual majorities and safe seats and think that this does not really matter very much to voters.
And those who point out that this hubristic "we are the masters now" approach leads to poor governance and corruption and a careless approach to spending taxpayers' money and the appointment of inadequate and incompetents to important posts and a general Italianisation of our public sphere get ignored or criticised.
Until those at the top take it seriously, until voters take it seriously this stuff will keep on happening.
It's a change of heart which is needed. Not simply a change in the rules.
I can cope with emergency contracts. What I object to is that being used as an excuse for everything that followed:
Contract awarded without tender not to expert company but to one founded last week by a Tory. Lets understand how / why that decision was made to avoid it in the next emergency
Contract awarded where vast sums (so often a £107m contract) were paid for equipment that was delivered faulty / not at all. Lets understand how we have paid for something we haven't received or can't use with no ability to claw back the money
Contract awarded with clear conflict of interest. We can have no future repeat of the "VIP channel" where top Tories lobby to have emergency 9-figure contracts awarded to top Tories
Contracts awarded on top of contracts on top of contracts. Its questionable enough awarding a contract worth double the value of a business even if they are in that field (unlike some others). Its then awarding procurement contracts on top then storage contracts on top. A transport company paid to transport stuff they have been paid to produce which turns out to be overprices usuable crap which the company then wins a further contract to store. Really?
Lets pick these apart, get our money back where the contract hasn't been fulfilled and learn the lessons.
Good morning
I agree with @Cyclefree and yourself and I suppose it was ever thus, and it is evident throughout local government as well
I am not persuaded about Cox but IDS needs to answer the allegations, but on all of this there has been a lot written over the last few days which does seem to be from guilty until proved innocent
Paterson was found guilty, and through Boris need to be liked and inability to follow the correct course he has opened this Pandora box
He is clearly not suitable to be PM but he does have a very loyal following and I am not at all certain he will be leaving his post anytime soon unless he suffers loss of the by elections and falling polling
I have a lot of respect for Chris Bryant and I hope some of the confrontational politics can be moderated to enable genuine cross party talks to resolve these serious issues
Acting as a consultant while an MP should be banned, and outside work permitted where it does not impacting the hours worked as an MP
Using Parliamentary estate for private business is a prima facie breach of the rules, is it not? So there is AIUI a very serious issue with Mr Cox [edit] which needs to be resolved.
I would be very surprised if many other mps have not done the same, especially in lockdown
He has been referred to the Standards Commissioner but according to Sky it is likely to be seen as a very minor breach which he may have to apologise for
You're speculating about what D, E or F might or might not have done. And you are saying 'oh, it's Ok, they all do it'.
The situatiuon with Mr Cox is different. Alleged hard video evidence, remember. At a hypersensitive time.
I am saying that Cox breach is minor and the video was shown on Sky
Are you saying Cox is the only MP to ever have conduced private business from their Commons Office
This MPs’ second jobs issue is tricky. In 1982-83, when John Smith was Shadow Energy Sec, I think I’m right in saying he made just one speech in the Commons, but spent several weeks in summer of 1983 as a QC in Scotland defending a man accused of murder. Was that right?
Lawyers being MPs is simply a much longer standing, traditional, second job. In fact when it began, being an MP was an extremely parttime hobby, really.
Yep. This is a Tory issue not a general MP issue. Almost all of the MPs making big money off 2nd jobs and consultancy are Conservative MPs.
So the Leader of the Opposition, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats and the Westminster Leader of the SNP who're all making big money off 2nd jobs are Tories now are they? 🤔
The mail has been attacking Boris and others every day, but I noticed yesterday that they turned their guns on Starmer who's outside earnings since 2015 were £113,975
Tried for years. Remember the donkeys?
If you are referring to the non story about Sir Keir buying some land for his Mum so that she could find a home for old donkeys, was that in the Mail or the Mail on Sunday? The papers have different editors with different agendas (and the editors hate one another according to Private Eye).
It has nothing to do with that at all
Since 2015 Keir Starmer has received £113,975 in legal fees in addition to his role as an MP
As long as MPs salaries are £82,000 a year they're going to do other jobs unless it's specifically outlawed, for the simple reason that most of them would otherwise be doing jobs paying a lot more than that.
Yep. This is a Tory issue not a general MP issue. Almost all of the MPs making big money off 2nd jobs and consultancy are Conservative MPs.
Yes, and that's the challenge for Labour. The fightback has already started. The Daily Mail, HYUFD, PT and Big G have already joined forces to try to persuade voters (and some PB readers) that it's a plague on all MPs houses, that they're all at it, they're all the same. But they're not. It will be a test for Labour communicators to convince the voting public that this is a Tory MP issue, not a generic MP issue.
I am imagining Geordie Greig chairing the zoom call fightback plan with HYUFD, PT and BigG and getting quite frustrated with the arguments over who is the proper Tory.
With antibody rates across all age groups at at least 89% it really suggests that we should be at herd immunity now or very soon.
Edit: In the older age groups you can see the impact of booster shots now.
Testing positive for antibodies doesn't imply immunity from infection or inability to infect others, though. If only it were that simple.
Come on Chris - its a lot better than NOT testing positive for antibodies. The vaccines have reduced the severity of the disease in most hugely, and reinfection post recovery is still minimal (unless you know otherwise?). Of course some of the old, frail population will be double and triple vaccinated and still die, but if it wasn't covid, it would be pneumonia or the flu or something else.
We have virtually no NPI's in place in England yet miraculously the case numbers (I know, I know) have dropped for two weeks now. Thats what herd immunity looks like, but it doesn't mean no one will catch covid.
George Grylls @georgegrylls Exclusive: Tory MP Laurence Robertson is paid £24,000 a year by the gambling industry.
He regularly uses parliamentary questions to demand ministers scrap tough new laws on gambling.
He denies any conflict of interest.
Some of the proposed new laws on gambling do need to be challenged with industry voices. Unfortunately one group that will not be heard are winning punters!
If there were to be one simple change I would make to the gambling industry, which would be hated by the gambling industry, it would be that the bookies would be forbidden from restricting stakes or restricting offers from winning punters.
If the bookies want to offer "free bets" etc to entice people into gambling they should be forced to offer them to all who want to bet, not just those who bet and lose. If they want to offer stakes to losing punters, those same stakes should be available to winning punters. And if they're going to stake limit winning punters that's fine, so long as they stake limit the entire market including losing punters.
Being able to fleece losing punters but closing the door on winning ones shouldn't be legal if you hold a gambling licence.
Not very libertarian of you Philip. They are private businesses they can and should do what they like.
They're licenced businesses.
If you want it to be private businesses then scrap the requirement for licences. But if you're going to have licences then it should be a condition of the licence that they treat punters equitably.
Fleecing losing punters but restricting winning ones should be something that unlicensed criminals are doing, not legal and licensed bookies given a licence and approval of the Gambling Commission.
Sorry but there are far bigger issues that need to be fixed before you tear up how the industry ensures its profitable (inappropriate / lax advertising laws, problem gambling, money laundering for 3).
Comments
But isn't the story really about greed? Here's a chap earning £82k for his "main" (ha ha) job, and yet raking in hundreds of thousands of pounds from his "second" jobs, money that over 99% of voters can only dream of, and yet is still sufficiently stingy to make a claim of 49p on expenses for some milk (yes, I know that was some years ago)?
Opposition MPs unable to get Cox out?
It sounds like the rules are out of date and apply to the days before the office was mobile. @Sandpit did a good post I thought.
Sir John is delusional and has never reconciled to Brexit. The dying gasp of people who can't accept Brexit should be ignored and the government should plow on with Article 16 because there is no alternative.
Especially when every single minister and shadow minister has two jobs (MP and being/shadowing a minister).
People who monitor vaccine (uptake) data - are there any signs of an increase in (first and second dose) uptake in Scotland and Wales since introduction of vaccine passes for nightclubs etc?
https://twitter.com/ScienceShared/status/1458178392738631685?s=20
TL:DR - "not much".
If you recall there was a fantastic exchange at PMQs over that one. Starmer laying into Boris and clearly suggesting he knew more than he was saying and Boris going almost puce as he ranted back at Starmer.
No wonder they needed to remove the Commissioner and scrap the standards system (would have saved Cox as well).
I distinctly recall writing headers pointing out the issues - specifically, conflicts of interest. And the problem with automatically defending bad behaviour if it was done by your side. And much else besides.
And the response was " it's an emergency" and "no we can't possibly take the 5 minutes needed to declare a conflict of interest or do some accelerated due diligence" and "what's wrong with VIP lanes for friends of the PM and Ministers" and "don't be so moralistic or high-minded" etc etc.
And here we are with the shit hitting the fan as it was always going to do, as plenty of people warned.
You can have all the rules you want but if people refuse to accept they apply to them because they know that their ultimate boss won't enforce them then there is damn all you can do. A good culture comes from the top. And at the top we have a PM who could not care less about these matters. This is not a surprise. Tory MPs and Tory party members were warned about this long before they elected him. They chose to ignore those warnings. Voters did too So now they are getting what they voted for.
We can ask lots of questions about why MPs find it so hard to do the right thing.
We might also ask why it is that voters don't care enough about these matters to ensure that MPs do the right thing. If voters cared about this enough to change their votes then MPs would pretty soon change. They don't. So MPs look at the 80-seat majority and their large individual majorities and safe seats and think that this does not really matter very much to voters.
And those who point out that this hubristic "we are the masters now" approach leads to poor governance and corruption and a careless approach to spending taxpayers' money and the appointment of inadequate and incompetents to important posts and a general Italianisation of our public sphere get ignored or criticised.
Until those at the top take it seriously, until voters take it seriously this stuff will keep on happening.
It's a change of heart which is needed. Not simply a change in the rules.
The optics of Cox absolutely stinks. It shows what the Tories really think is important.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2021/nov/09/ben-jennings-on-the-claim-boris-johnson-is-leading-the-tories-through-the-sewers-cartoon https://twitter.com/BJennings90/status/1458168425944174595/photo/1
The focus on Cox suggests that so far they've done A-C, so still D-Z to go.
Perhaps Boris Johnson has overlooked Churchill's interesting sources of additional revenue over his years as MP.
I’m not sure ‘a return to Churchillian values’ quite works in the context.
Contract awarded without tender not to expert company but to one founded last week by a Tory. Lets understand how / why that decision was made to avoid it in the next emergency
Contract awarded where vast sums (so often a £107m contract) were paid for equipment that was delivered faulty / not at all. Lets understand how we have paid for something we haven't received or can't use with no ability to claw back the money
Contract awarded with clear conflict of interest. We can have no future repeat of the "VIP channel" where top Tories lobby to have emergency 9-figure contracts awarded to top Tories
Contracts awarded on top of contracts on top of contracts. Its questionable enough awarding a contract worth double the value of a business even if they are in that field (unlike some others). Its then awarding procurement contracts on top then storage contracts on top. A transport company paid to transport stuff they have been paid to produce which turns out to be overprices usuable crap which the company then wins a further contract to store. Really?
Lets pick these apart, get our money back where the contract hasn't been fulfilled and learn the lessons.
The government's error was not realising that lack of interest at one point in time doesn't mean lack of interest forever.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/race-norming-nfl-concussions/
Shredding Tony Blair's records didn't seem to be accidental.
As for Boris Johnson, he like Churchill seems to be happy for others to help him live in a style to which he is accustomed, and like Churchill he has been willing to have a lucrative second career in journalism, allied to a cavalier attitude to expenses.
That wording would seem to preclude using the office to connect to zoom calls, but you could see that if the wording was more specific that it might only cover physical in person meetings.
Clearly one for the lawyers.
On the other hand, they get hired at management level, for their contacts in politics.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveyantibodyandvaccinationdatafortheuk/10november2021
With antibody rates across all age groups at at least 89% it really suggests that we should be at herd immunity now or very soon.
Edit: In the older age groups you can see the impact of booster shots now.
I agree with @Cyclefree and yourself and I suppose it was ever thus, and it is evident throughout local government as well
I am not persuaded about Cox but IDS needs to answer the allegations, but on all of this there has been a lot written over the last few days which does seem to be from guilty until proved innocent
Paterson was found guilty, and through Boris need to be liked and inability to follow the correct course he has opened this Pandora box
He is clearly not suitable to be PM but he does have a very loyal following and I am not at all certain he will be leaving his post anytime soon unless he suffers loss of the by elections and falling polling
I have a lot of respect for Chris Bryant and I hope some of the confrontational politics can be moderated to enable genuine cross party talks to resolve these serious issues
Acting as a consultant while an MP should be banned, and outside work permitted where it does not impact the hours worked as an MP
Which was a separate issue of Governance from money-farming via the expenses scheme.
We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the main scandal here is lobbying and that's what the IDS allegations seem to be if true.
The problem is the EU and Ireland especially foolhardily chose to get the NI solution resolved before the trade negotiations, when it should have always been the other way around. So there was a temporary fix in the Protocol made prior to the TCA . . . now that temporary fix should be superseded with a more permanent solution.
Its funny how so many of those who said four years ago we should agree to the backstop as it was only temporary (despite having no unilateral exit) are now horrified that the Protocol is being treated as temporary. I can only guess all that was said in bad faith by those who wanted the UK signing up to the backstop.
Which was a separate issue of Governance from the laxity or regulatory capture of the expenses scheme, or the exploitation of that laxity via excessive or fiddle claims.
Cox left dangling.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/19706296.mp-andrew-bowie-quits-vice-chair-conservative-party/?ref=ebbn
May just be coincidence, but it looks as if at least one Tory MP is being very wary of perceived double-jobbing.
He has been referred to the Standards Commissioner but according to Sky it is likely to be seen as a very minor breach which he may have to apologise for
"But Cox’s Torridge and West Devon seat is a trickier prospect: it is rich in Tory-friendly demographics, but it has a history of Liberal Democrat success and the local Liberal Democrat party is still well-organised and active. A by-election in West Devon, whether as a result of a recall or if changes to how MPs conduct their business force Cox to choose between his legal work and his parliamentary career, would be altogether gnarlier than the contests in North Shropshire and Bexley.
Of course, the bigger problem for Boris Johnson is that the only way to put the toothpaste back in the tube may be to sharply limit MPs’ ability to engage in paid consultancies. This would leave large numbers of his backbenchers out of pocket, and for no reason other than a fight the Prime Minister didn’t need to pick and one he shows no sign of being able to finish without inflicting political damage on himself and financial damage on his MPs."
George Grylls
@georgegrylls
Exclusive: Tory MP Laurence Robertson is paid £24,000 a year by the gambling industry.
He regularly uses parliamentary questions to demand ministers scrap tough new laws on gambling.
He denies any conflict of interest.
During the last great sleaze scandal that only happened once the tories had been given a right big kicking in the only poll which really matters. Sleaze of this same entitled nature directly fuelled the 1997 Labour landslide.
The arrogant dismissal of this as an issue, even by a handful of diehards on here, is glorious to read for all of us who loathe this Government. The more arrogant they are, the more the public will give them a kicking.
Charities, businesses, Traddes Unions? What about unpaid (and therefore untransparent) consultancy?
One of the more interesting aspects of the "Alliance for Lobbying Transparency" (seems to have rebranded) is that they seemed to want their member organisations to be less regulated.
Would it not be covered by laws against bribery? If not why not?
The situatiuon with Mr Cox is different. Alleged hard video evidence, remember. At a hypersensitive time.
Which keeps the narrative - critical for any story to become massive - firmly on point. Namely who leaned on who to ensure vast billions was wasted on dodgy Covid contracts, who paid for the Downing Street flat refurb and what that bough them in return, the flogged peerages etc etc etc.
We will see a few casualties on the opposition benches. But this could literally sink the government. If nothing else its "man of the people" representing blue collar England against the establishment will be over. And if you've been lied to about that what else have they lied to you about...?
[@Selebian walks off in a huff]
Check, please!
"TORY SLEAZE LATEST"
The fact that there are others trousering on the other benches won't cut through, however true it is. The tories are in charge and somehow they always manage to do this kind of contemptuous sleaze a thousand times better than anyone else.
The other equally minor breach of the rules would be if Cox used the parliamentary wifi as I assume it is for 'personal use only' - certainly that's true for gov wifi elsewhere. He may not have done so as I'm sure as a top QC he can afford to use the data on his phone for video conferences.
If the bookies want to offer "free bets" etc to entice people into gambling they should be forced to offer them to all who want to bet, not just those who bet and lose. If they want to offer stakes to losing punters, those same stakes should be available to winning punters. And if they're going to stake limit winning punters that's fine, so long as they stake limit the entire market including losing punters.
Being able to fleece losing punters but closing the door on winning ones shouldn't be legal if you hold a gambling licence.
I'm not clear how wide any settlement will be - will it include fishing permits, City equivalence, NI Trusted Trader, Horizon, recognition of Court Rulings? There's a whole lot of stuff that needs to be changed or unpicked for a best-possible relationship, but also the EuCo self-image obsession to acknowledge.
Of course there'd be more Tories doing it, because there are more Tories. But its an all MPs thing not a Tories thing.
Quite right. It seems to have been the MoS with the donkeys. (But that was May 2020. Not sure about the editorial situation then - but quite happy to accept you are right on that even back then.)
Labour are instinctively less motivated by personal gain so there are proportionately fewer with their hands in the till.
There's nothing quite like corrupt authoritarian trades unions and one-party rulers.
Are you saying Cox is the only MP to ever have conduced private business from their Commons Office
Interesting from Crick
@MichaelLCrick
This MPs’ second jobs issue is tricky. In 1982-83, when John Smith was Shadow Energy Sec, I think I’m right in saying he made just one speech in the Commons, but spent several weeks in summer of 1983 as a QC in Scotland defending a man accused of murder. Was that right?
"The register of MPs’ interests shows that more than 90 out of 360 Tories have extra jobs on top of their work in parliament, compared with three from Labour. They are overwhelmingly older and 86% are men. The highest earners were all former cabinet ministers."
Jobs for that analysis is paid regular work, not unpaid roles or "ad hoc payments for journalism, speaking at events, training, lectures or surveys"
So it is a reasonably small number of MPs, mostly the older intake. If it were banned it seems unlikely to change the newer intake much. I would suggest capping it at 500 hours per year and taxing all MP additional job earnings at the highest marginal rate anyone in the country faces.
So you're rolling the pitch so as to be able to claim "We Win!" regardless. Which is the usual MO from you tbf. Never mind, it was worth a try.
Let's just pose another one before we get back to the more interesting and important topic of Johnson Tory Sleaze. Are we going to trigger Art 16?
If your answer is the inevitable "Yes, if the EU don't cave, but if they do cave, no" don't worry about typing it all out, you can just say "Bananas!" and I'll understand.
If you want it to be private businesses then scrap the requirement for licences. But if you're going to have licences then it should be a condition of the licence that they treat punters equitably.
Fleecing losing punters but restricting winning ones should be something that unlicensed criminals are doing, not legal and licensed bookies given a licence and approval of the Gambling Commission.
*I've made an actual steam boiler and had it tested as safe by a professional steam boiler tester.
It's not helped by the sheer cavalier arrogance with which their party in Westminster and the British Virgin Islands have handled it.
EG the "single view of customer" idea that rather than having data protection, bookies would share punters gambling history with each other in order to better identify "problem gamblers".
Except what is a "problem gambler"? Without saying so officially the bookies definition of a problem gambler is likely to be one that is winning, not one that is losing.
So if a the bookies are able to use this data to stake restrict or block from offers winning punters based on data from other bookies - thus being able to offer more tempting pulls to those who are genuinely problem gamblers, then that's going to make everything worse.
Just because X does it doesn't mean it isn't against the rules.
John Smith: that example is a full 38 years old. Maybe in recess, too.
Since 2015 Keir Starmer has received £113,975 in legal fees in addition to his role as an MP
We have virtually no NPI's in place in England yet miraculously the case numbers (I know, I know) have dropped for two weeks now. Thats what herd immunity looks like, but it doesn't mean no one will catch covid.