Scott Benton faces Commons suspension over lobbying to give Tories potential byelection headache – UK politics live | Politics

Rishi Sunak has said that he is open to considering ways in which his Rwanda bill can be “improved”.

With Conservative rightwingers and centrists both wanting to amend the bill, in opposite directions, when it returns to the Commons in the new year, Sunak signalled that the government would be open to accepting some changes.

On a visit to a school in Finchley, he told broadcasters:

I’ve been very consistently clear, as have all ministers, if there are ways that the legislation can be improved, to be made even more effective — with a respectable legal argument and maintaining the participation of the Rwandans in the scheme — of course we would be open to that, who wouldn’t be?

In fact, when Sunak first unveiled his bill, he implied he was not open to amendments, saying that if he were to shift “an inch” towards making the legislation stricter, the plan would be unacceptable to Rwanda.

But on Tuesday Tory rightwingers claimed Sunak had assured them he was open to amendments and they implied this was crucial in persuading them not to vote against the bill at second reading.

The waiting list for routine hospital treatment in England has fallen slightly, figures out today show.

As PA Media reports, an estimated 7.71 million treatments were waiting to be carried out at the end of October, relating to 6.44 million patients – down from a record 7.77 million treatments and 6.50 million patients at the end of September, NHS England said.

This is from James Illman from the Health Service Journal.

NHS waiting list falls (a tiny bit – by 0.5%) but remains at 7.7 million – c. 500k more than level when PM pledged to have list falling by 2024. +ve news: 1st overall fall in list since Nov 2022. -ve: 78-week breaches up to 10,500.

And this is from Stuart Hoddinott from the Institute for Government thinktank.

New elective data out today: the total waiting list fell by 65k in October. That’s a a large fall, but still leaves the waiting list 490k higher than in Jan when Sunak promised to cut waiting lists

It’s also not unusual for the elective list to fall at this time of year

Scott Benton is being punished in relation to lobbying, but not because he directly broke the rules banning MPs from engaging in paid lobbying when he spoke to undercover reporters. The committee said that, because he indicated that he was willing to break the rules, and because he claimed over MPs had done so in the past, he damaged the reputation of the Commons.

Here are some extracts from the report setting out what Benton said, and why it was considered damaging to parliament’s reputation

On Benton being willing to break the rules himself

One of the reporters then asked Mr Benton what assistance he could offer by way of “insight and kind of getting a bit of a sense of behind the scenes, what’s going on and what’s likely to come”. Mr Benton responded:

“Probably real-time information. If I want to speak to a minister urgently, I can probably arrange that, have her call back within a day. Failing that, again it’s a voting lobbies issue. So if you were, for example, to write to her today, and you needed an urgent answer within a week and somebody hadn’t got back to her with that week period I could literally sit outside her office until she appears. Which is something only MPs can essentially do to try and get that real-time flow of information and answers back.”

All the actions listed above, if undertaken by an MP in return for payment, would be in breach of the house’s lobbying rules

On other MPs being willing to break the rules

Mr Benton spoke to the undercover reporters about the willingness of members to accept paid hospitality such as hiring a box at Cheltenham races or offering them a private dinner (“Talk about pushing at an open door. In fact you’ll have people chasing you saying colleague X, Y and Z wants to come, is there any more room. And that works very, very well”). Mr Benton immediately followed up these comments by saying, in reference to those members who had accepted hospitality, “And those specific asks you would have, they would be able to yeah take those on board and try to do something as a bit of a return.” Mr Benton also told the reporters that he was willing to “call in favours” to “bring colleagues along” to meet company representatives to “talk them through those certain asks”, and to host a dinner for that purpose at the House of Commons “where we can go through some of those particular issues as well” with “colleagues who would be more than happy to support you”. In context, the “specific asks” and “certain asks” referred to by Mr Benton must allude to the services to the company offered by Mr Benton, which as we have seen would have breached the house’s rules. There is no other plausible interpretation of Mr Benton’s comments. The implication is clear that the other members referred to had engaged in such behaviour in the past and would be willing to do so in future …

At the meeting one of the reporters continued these exchanges by asking: “If we invite someone along, is it reasonable to then expect them, we’ve given you a nice day out, we kind of expect something in return? Is that how it works?” Mr Benton responded:

“Generally. Most colleagues would do that, not everybody would. You would get some people who would say it was a lovely day and will never pick up the phone and call or send an email afterwards. But most would, especially if the ask wasn’t too onerous, which would be can you try and find out x, y and z from members of staff, file a parliamentary question, or submit this question the next time oral questions come up in the House of Commons (…) Sometimes we co-sign letters on behalf of different companies as well.”

Taking Mr Benton’s comments during the meeting as a whole, we consider that the only reasonable interpretation of those comments is that Mr Benton was indicating not only that he personally was willing to take actions in breach of the rules, but that a significant number of other members of the house took a similar attitude, the implication being that they were willing to disregard, and had in the past disregarded, those rules.

Here is the conclusion from the standards committee’s report into Scott Benton.

By repeatedly indicating his willingness to disregard the house’s rules (on paid lobbying), and by giving the impression that many members of the house had in the past and will in the future engage in such misconduct, Mr Benton committed a very serious breach of paragraph 11 of the rules. His comments gave a false impression of the morality of MPs in a way which, if the public were to accept them as accurate, would be corrosive to respect for Parliament and undermine the foundations of our democracy.

A serious sanction is appropriate. We recommend that the house suspend Mr Benton from its service for a total of 35 days, with concomitant loss of salary.

Paragraph 11 of the rules in the code of conduct for MPs says:

Members shall never undertake any action which would cause significant damage to the reputation and integrity of the House of Commons as a whole, or of its members generally.

The Commons standards committee has just published its report into Scott Benton, the Conservative MP (now suspended from the party and sitting as an independent) investigated for telling undercover reporters he would be willing to lobby on behalf of the gambling industry.

The committtee says Benton should face a 35-day suspension for breaking parliamentary rules. That would allow campaigners to use the recall process to trigger a recall byelection in his constituency, Blackpool South, where he had a majority of just 3,690 over Labour at the last election.

Good morning. Rishi Sunak has given a Christmas interview to the Spectator, the rightwing magazine widely read by Conservatives, and there are two good lines – one personal, and relatively trivial, and another not particularly surprising, but of huge relevance to the election campaign next year.

Katy Balls was interviewing Sunak and she asked him about a word that comes up increasingly frequently when journalists are trying to describe his demeanour in public, particularly when he is being challenged. Sunak insisted he was not “tetchy”; he was just “passionate”. Balls wrote:

He has been accused of being ‘tetchy’ – most recently during his diplomatic spat with the Greek Prime Minister over the Elgin Marbles. What does he think of the allegation? ‘I don’t understand that,’ he replies. He points to his leadership campaign. ‘That wasn’t an easy time for me, I was taking a lot of criticism and flak. But I just fought hard for what I believed in – every day, seven days a week for six weeks. I’m the same person now, I am fighting for the things I believe in. There’s nothing tetchy. But I am passionate. When things are not working the way I want them to work, of course I’m going to be frustrated.’

But the main point line was about taxation, and how the Conservatives will campaign in the election expected next year. We all know that Sunak intends to go into that election trying to depict the Conservatives as, unlike Labour, a tax-cutting party (even though the tax burden is on course to hit a post-war high). But there were two points that were newish.

First, he promised a “gear shift” in the Tories’ approach to taxation (which implies promising even larger tax cuts than expected – which critics would see as evidence of electoral desperation).

And, second, he was explicit about using welfare cuts to fund them.

On tax, Sunak told Balls:

I have always said I’m a Thatcherite in the truest sense. As Nigel Lawson and Margaret Thatcher said: cut inflation, cut taxes. That’s what we’ve done! We have delivered more tax cuts in one fiscal event than at any point since the 1980s.

When Balls made the obvious point about the tax burden being particularly high, Sunak replied:

That’s a really glass-half-empty way to look at it. You’ve got to differentiate. Look, why is the tax burden as high as it is? It’s because we had a once-in-a-century pandemic and we had a war in Ukraine, both of which necessitated an enormous response from the government …

The choice at the next election is between me and Keir Starmer. A Labour party that wants to borrow £28 billion a year is not going to control welfare or public spending. A Conservative party is going to do those things – and cut your taxes instead.

Balls says, as chancellor, Sunak was surprised to find that a third of all UK households are in receipt of some kind of benefit. He told her he thought more reform was needed.

Over the last decade we haven’t reformed those rules (to qualify for welfare). Three times as many people today are being told that they don’t have to work because of ill-health than were a decade ago. I don’t believe our country has got three times sicker …

(Some changes) take time because they are very large system changes – you are dealing with a very complex system… Our priority, going forward, is to control spending and welfare so that we can cut taxes. We are in a position to be able to do all that because we have got inflation down. The economy has turned a corner and that means that there can be a gear shift in how we approach taxes.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: NHS England publishes its latest performance figures.

Morning: The Commons standards committee is expected to publish its report into allegations against the Conservative MP Scott Benton.

Morning: Rishi Sunak visits a school in north London.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

3pm: David Cameron gives evidence to the Lords European affairs committee.

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