Kathryn Stone, parliament’s sleaze watchdog, has had her protection ramped up amid a rise in abuse against the backdrop of the Owen Paterson lobbying scandal. MPs have previously sought to undermine the position of the parliamentary commissioner for standards after her inquiries into the finances of Boris Johnson. But messages of abuse targeted at her and her office reached a peak last week after the business secretary called on her to consider her position, it is understood. Kwasi Kwarteng’s comment came before a government U-turn after Tory MPs voted to overturn her investigation into lobbying breaches by Paterson, who resigned as a Conservative backbench MP last week. Steps have been taken to step up security for Stone after online abuse, the Guardian understands. On Sunday, a former chair of the committee for standards in public life said the government’s actions were putting Stone in harm’s way. Party leaders needed to do more to publicly back and support Stone, Sir Alistair Graham told Times Radio. “She is a public servant who has been there for a number of years who is now doing an excellent job in the House of Commons. The last thing she needs are threats which are seeking to place undue pressure on her,” he said. “Of course the worry has been that over the past 72 hours or so, the real story behind [the row surrounding] Owen Paterson is not [about his] safeguarding his position but trying to find a way to push Kathryn Stone out of her job and that is of course a shocking state of affairs.” Asked whether Graham blamed the government for doing things that seemingly put her in harms way, he said: “Yes, I do. “The fact that they have sought to whip their Conservative members of parliament to not allow the recommendation from the House of Commons standards committee to suspend Owen Paterson, and then an amendment which was really about abolishing the standards regime in the House of Commons, was a dreadful manoeuvre. “Many people suspect it was about getting Kathryn Stone out because she may well be carrying out further investigations regarding sleaze accusations relating to the prime minister.” The environment secretary, George Eustice, was asked on BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show for his response to reports of Stone receiving hate mail for doing her job. Eustice did not comment on the abuse but reiterated that the government had been seeking to create an appeals process for MPs accused of breaches.