UK politics live: MPs to get vote ‘as soon as possible’ on proposal to suspend Owen Paterson, No 10 says

Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker, has criticised Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, for the interview he gave this morning suggesting the parliamentary commissioner for standards should resign. (See 9.27am.) Hoyle told MPs:

It’s not been a good period for the house, it’s been a very, very difficult time for all.

What I would say is I do appeal to members – whether they are secretary of state or whoever – please, staff members of this house shouldn’t be named, they’ve not got the right of reply or the ability to defend themselves …

I’ve got to say please, rein in your thoughts, consider what you are doing to the individuals concerned, they also have to live through this like the rest of us.

Please, consider inappropriate behaviour and start acting responsible to the position that you hold.

Sir Roger Gale, a Conservative MP who voted for the amendment to shelve the suspension of Owen Paterson yesterday, has just told the World at One that, in the new vote on suspending Paterson, he will probably abstain.

He said he was glad the government had taken the decision to decouple the proposal for reform of the system, which he favours, from the Paterson case. But he also said he was reluctant to vote for Paterson’s suspension because he did not believe his colleague had received a fair hearing.

The Telegraph’s Tony Diver has a picture of the vandalism done to the office of the Tory MP Peter Bone overnight. Bone told MPs earlier that this was a result of his decision to vote to shelve the proposal to suspend Owen Paterson yesterday. (See 11am.)

And here is a full summary of the Downing Street lobby briefing.

• No 10 has confirmed that another Commons vote will be held on the proposal to suspend Owen Paterson as an MP “as soon as possible”. (See 12.36pm.)

• The spokesman indicated government MPs would not be whipped on the new vote. Votes on standards committee recommendations are normally free votes, because they are seen as House of Commons business. The decision to whip the vote yesterday was an exception, not the norm.

• The spokesman was unable to say exactly when Boris Johnson changed his mind on this issue. But he said it was clear “there’s not cross-party consensus for the amendment that was voted through yesterday”.

• The spokesman refused to back Kwasi Kwarteng’s suggestion that Kathryn Stone should resign as parliamentary commissioner for standards. That was a matter for her, he said. He also disputed claims that Kwarteng had suggested she should resign, citing the proviso Kwarteng included in his interview (“But I’m not saying she should resign” – even though Kwarteng did seem to be saying that – see 9.27am).

• But the spokesman also refused to say Johnson had confidence in Stone. Asked if he did, the spokesman just said Johnson was focused on the need to include an appeals system in the process.

• The spokesman rejected Dominic Cummings’ claim that yesterday’s vote was intended to undermine Stone. (See 9.34am.) Asked if the vote was a pre-emptive strike against her, the spokesman said no. He also denied Cummings’ claims that Johnson had lied about the funding of his flat.

• The spokesman defended Johnson’s decision to take a private jet fro Glasgow to London on Tuesday night after attending the Cop26 climate conference. (See 10.13am.) The spokesman said the government was taking a lead in addressing climate change. He also said that the plane used sustainable aviation fuel, and that emissions were offset.

• The spokesman would not say if Johnson discussed the Owen Paterson case with Charles Moore at the dinner on Tuesday. (See 10.13am.) Moore and Paterson are very close friends, and Moore has been one of his strongest defenders in the media. The spokesman said it was a private dinner and he had not discussed it with the PM.

• The spokesman condemned the latest Insulate Britain protest (see 1.01pm), saying the group were causing “intolerable disruption”.

Insulate Britain campaigners have been protesting outside the Houses of Parliament today. Some of them glued their hands to the road.

The Downing Street lobby briefing has just finished, and the prime minister’s spokesman has confirmed that another Commons vote will be held on the proposal to suspend Owen Paterson as an MP “as soon as possible”.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, will give details of the vote in due course, the spokesman said. He said the government was decoupling the Paterson issue from the wider issue of reforming the way the Commons disciplinary process operates, and that at a later date proposals for reform would be put to a vote separately.

Asked to explain the U-turn, the spokesman said the government was responding to “strong feeling” in the Commons. He went on:

The amendment itself required cross-party consensus. Once it became clear that was not going to be achieved, it was necessary to look again at this and therefore separate out this individual case with a wider necessity to introduce an appeals process.

Asked why No 10 did not decouple the two issues from the start, the spokesman said the government was trying to address both issues as soon as it could.

I will post more from the lobby shortly.

This is from Mark Harper, a former Tory chief whip.

Harper was one of the 13 Tory rebels who defied the whip and voted against the Andrea Leadsom amendment yesterday.

There were actually 14 full Tory rebels yesterday (if you define a full rebel as someone who votes against the whip, instead of just abstaining). Sir Peter Bottomley, the father of the Commons, abstained on the Leadsom amendment, but in the second vote (on the main motion, as amended) he voted against.

Sir Keir Starmer has accused Boris Johnson of “leading his troops through the sewer”, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg reports.

From the FT’s Robert Shrimsley

David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, has said the government’s U-turn over Commons standards is too late.

The Conservative MP Angela Richardson has been reinstated as PPS (parliamentary private secretary) to Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary. She was dismissed last night from the post after she abstained last night in the vote on the Owen Paterson motion, instead of voting for the Andrea Leadsom in line with the three-line whip.

In the Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, has granted an application for an emergency debate on the parliamentary standards system that will take place on Monday.

The application came from the Lib Dem chief whip, Wendy Chamberlain. She told MPs:

The government’s decision not just to meddle in an independent process but then to whip Conservative members to get what they wanted is one of the worst over-reaches of executive power that this house has seen in its history.

Social media executives could be held criminally liable for safety breaches on their platforms within months of the online safety bill coming into effect, Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, has said. As PA Media reports, Dorries made the disclosure in evidence to the committee considering the draft bill this morning. PA reports

Dorries told the committee that she wants to accelerate the introduction of personal liability sanctions for company managers to spark a faster response to the threat of online harms.

The draft bill includes personal criminal liability sanctions for executives which can be introduced two years after the implementation of the bill.

However, Dorries said it was “nonsense” to give firms two years to change, confirming she was looking at “three to six months” for criminal liability to be introduced.

“So, to the platforms, take note now – it will not be two years,” she told the committee.

“We are looking at truncating that to a very much shorter timeframe and that’s one of the areas as secretary of state I want to go further in this bill.

“I think it’s just a nonsense that platforms have been given two years to make themselves ready for what would be criminal action.

“They know what they’re doing now, they actually have the ability to put right what they’re doing wrong now, they have the ability now to abide by their own terms and conditions – they could remove harmful algorithms tomorrow.”

Under the current proposals, tech firms that fail to protect their users from harmful content face fines of up to 10% of their global turnover – which could run into billions of pounds for the largest platforms – as well as having access to their sites blocked.

During her evidence, Dorries also criticised Facebook’s recent company rebrand to Meta and its plans to work on the virtual world known as the metaverse, saying that while its boss Mark Zuckerberg and communications boss Nick Clegg want to “take off into the metaverse” they should instead “stay in the real world”.

She said: “Now I believe we heard that they’re [Facebook] putting 10 or 20,000 engineers on to the metaverse – put those 10 or 20,000 engineers now on to abiding by your terms and conditions and to removing your harmful algorithms because if you don’t, this bill will be watertight.”

Dorries also said the bill was “possibly the most important piece of legislation to pass through parliament” in her time as an MP, calling it a “novel” piece of legislations that was “groundbreaking” and “extremely important”.

Thangam Debbonaire, the shadow leader of the Commons, has issued a statement saying the government must schedule a vote on suspending Owen Paterson. She said:

The government’s pathetic attempt to hide from their actions doesn’t fix anything. Last night, they voted to allow corruption to take place unimpeded at the heart of British politics.

MPs must now vote to uphold the sanctions against Owen Paterson. Any other result will allow Boris Johnson to create one rule for Tory MPs, another for everyone else.

Bryant says it was “completely inappropriate” for Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, to effectively call for the resignation of Kathryn Stone, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, this morning. (See 9.27am.) He says she is very fair and very robust, and that he supports her 100%. He says he expects her to stay in post until her contract ends, in December next year.