The findings of the official investigation into the lobbying activities of the Conservative former minister Owen Paterson are damning. He is found to have consistently broken the rules governing the conduct of MPs in three ways when he lobbied for two companies that were paying him large sums of money. He is also criticised for making “unsubstantiated” allegations against Kathryn Stone, the watchdog who conducted the investigation into him. Stone, the parliamentary standards commissioner, began her investigation into Paterson following an article in the Guardian in September 2019. The paper had disclosed documents revealing how Paterson had helped to lobby for the two firms. The House of Commons standards committee, which is responsible for policing MPs’ conduct, spelled out the seriousness of the findings against the prominent Brexiter when they recommended that he should be suspended from parliament for 30 days. In its conclusion, the committee said: “The breaches, taken together, reflect a pattern of behaviour where Mr Paterson failed to observe a clear boundary between his outside commercial work and his parliamentary activities. “No previous case of paid advocacy has seen so many breaches or such a clear pattern of confusion between the private and public interest.” The MPs ruled that Paterson had “used his privileged position … to secure benefits for two companies for whom he was a paid consultant” and that he had “brought the house into disrepute”. The MPs and Stone concluded that he had broken the code of conduct when he lobbied ministers at the Department for International Department and officials at the Food Standards Agency (FSA) on behalf of the two companies between November 2016 and July 2018. He is paid almost £100,000 a year by the healthcare company Randox and £12,000 by the food manufacturer Lynn’s Country Foods, on top of his parliamentary salary. Paterson broke the rule that states no MP “shall act as a paid advocate in any proceeding of the house”. These rules – which were described by the MPs as “crucial” – are designed to ensure MPs do not use their access to ministers and public officials to try to secure an exclusive advantage for those who are paying them. They aim to ensure that “policy and parliamentary agenda cannot be set by making payments” to an MP. The rules state that an MP may lobby on behalf of a paying client, but there are restrictions. Any lobbying must not help to give an exclusive financial benefit to the client, and the client must not have initiated the lobbying. The point of the rules is to avoid a repeat of previous scandals in which MPs were paid to promote the interests of outside organisations. Paterson also broke a second rule when he failed to declare he was a paid consultant to Lynn’s Country Foods when he emailed officials at the Food Standards Agency on four occasions between November 2016 and January 2018. He broke a third rule within the MPs’ code of conduct when he used his parliamentary office for business meetings for his clients between October 2016 and February 2020 as well as twice using House of Commons-headed notepaper to promote his business interests. The documents uncovered by the Guardian showed that Paterson had met the FSA with Randox, which had suggested that antibiotic residues had been found in milk sold in supermarkets. Randox said it had developed a technique that could detect antibiotic residues in milk, and suggested the FSA adopt it for widespread testing.
In addition, Paterson lobbied the agency for Lynn’s during a dispute about additives in its products. The documents also showed that he had lobbied ministers on behalf of Randox when it wanted to sell its products to the government. Paterson alleged Stone was biased against him and had determined he was guilty many months ago. However, the MPs on the standards committee criticised Paterson, saying it was “completely unacceptable to make unsubstantiated, serious, and personal allegations against the integrity of the commissioner and her team, who cannot respond publicly”. The MPs noted that Paterson’s wife, Rose, had taken her own life last year. The MPs added that it was very possible that “grief and distress caused by this event has affected the way in which Mr Paterson approached the commissioner’s investigation thereafter”. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or by emailing jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org