BORIS Johnson has “basically admitted” that his proposals to reform Westminster standards would not have prevented even one of the sleaze scandals which have engulfed the Tory government, the SNP have said.
Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions, the SNP’s leader at Westminster, Ian Blackford, said Johnson had been at the “rotten core” of every one of those sleaze scandals.
He also hit out at the “half-hearted, half-baked, and already half-botched proposals” Johnson was forced to put forward amid public outrage at his government’s conduct.
The Tory leader wrote to the Commons Speaker on Tuesday to propose the MPs’ code of conduct be updated to ensure “MPs who are prioritising outside interests over their constituents are investigated and appropriately punished” and that “MPs are banned from acting as paid political consultants or lobbyists”.
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However, the current code of conduct already explicitly bans MPs from acting “as a paid advocate in any proceeding of the House”, and says that representatives must “resolve any conflict between [personal interest and public interest], at once, and in favour of the public interest”.
Criticising the proposals, Blackford asked the Prime Minister which of the scandals that have rocked his Tory government in recent weeks and months would have been prevented by the new proposals.
Johnson declined to give a straight answer, instead calling for MPs to “proceed with the couple of reforms that I’ve indicated” on a cross-party basis.
Blackford said that, in his answer, the Prime Minister had “basically admitted that not one of this government’s sleaze scandals would have been stopped by his so-called plan”.
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The SNP Westminster leader went on: “Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, given that the Prime Minister has been at the rotten core of all these scandals.
“The trail of sleaze and scandal all leads back to the funding of the Conservative Party.”
Blackford highlighted that since 2010 the Tory Party has made nine of its former treasurers members of the House of Lords, and that “every single one of them” had donated at least £3 million to the party.
“That is the very definition of corruption, it is the public’s definition of corruption,” he said.
Johnson was asked if he would agree with that definition, or if he was “the only person in the country who has the brass neck to argue that it was all one big coincidence”.
After taking a jab at the “missing £600,000 in the SNP party accounts”, the Prime Minister claimed that the opposition’s “constant attacks” on corruption in his government did a disservice to the people around the world suffering under true corruption.
Johnson then claimed that the UK has one of the “cleanest” democracies in the world.
He previously made a similar claim during COP26, when he was forced to deny the UK was a corrupt country amid mounting allegations of sleaze within his government.
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