JACOB Rees-Mogg has dismissed demands for a two-day debate on UK Government corruption, arguing that it is not of paramount importance to voters.
The House of Commons leader was asked by the SNP to back two days of discussion on “Government sleaze and corruption”, and for more discussion of “cash for honours” in the House of Lords.
Yet the Tory minister insisted parliamentarians have spent “quite enough time” debating their own standards and should focus on issues that impact their constituents.
Speaking in the Commons, Pete Wishart said: “Can I congratulate the Leader of the House? Congratulate him for actually still being here. He has defied every single rule and principle of political gravity by ensuring that this disastrous period of sleaze now goes into its third week.”
He added: “We do need at least two days of debate on all the issues around Government sleaze and corruption, and we need to see the Prime Minister leading those debates.”
Wishart also called for more Commons time on “cash for honours” in the House of Lords after he called for the Metropolitan Police to investigate it earlier this month.
He said: “The Prime Minister yesterday all but conceded that donors are given a place in the House of Lords for the contributions and he said … until you get rid of the system by which changing in bands from other parties we have to go ahead, conceding that money buys you a place in the legislature which allows you to defined to determine and amend the laws of this country.”
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But Rees-Mogg refused to budge. He replied: “We have spent quite enough time, I think, discussing ourselves in this House in the last 10 days or so.
“It does seem to me, I go back to the Finance Bill, a bit of a concern that when we have a debate that could go to any hour on something that affects every single one of our constituents, affects their livelihoods, the opposition are too idle to turn up to debate it.
“But when we are talking about ourselves they want even more time to do a little bit of focusing on our own concerns.”
On Lords reform, the Tory minister added: “The idea that there is this huge public concern about the House of Lords, well he [Wishart] must move in very different circles to those that we have in North East Somerset. The number of letters I received on reform of the House of Lords can be counted in single digits most years.”
Boris Johnson admitted earlier that his handling of the Owen Paterson sleaze scandal has been akin to crashing a car “into a ditch”.
On Wednesday, the Commons backed Johnson’s proposals to ban MPs from taking paid political consultancies and to limit the time they can spend doing second jobs.
However just 297 MPs – fewer than half the total – voted for the motion, with opposition parties abstaining.
The Paterson affair has coincided with fresh cash for honours revelations, with an investigation revealing Tory treasurers who have donated £3 million to the party are virtually guaranteed to be granted a seat in the Lords.
Despite Rees-Mogg’s claims that the scandals are not of importance to voters, the revelations have coincided with a slump in the polls for Boris Johnson’s parties. Two in three voters told a YouGov poll for the Times that they thought the Tories were “very sleazy, the highest level since the 1990s. A poll by Savanta ComRes at the weekend put Labour six points ahead of the Conservatives.
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