Only last week the government voted to change the rules on parliamentary standards. This was a direct attempt to save one of their own from a parliamentary suspension due to wrongdoing. Just how honourable are our ‘honourable’ members?
In a typical U-turn, the government then back-tracked. This was followed swiftly by the resignation of Owen Paterson, the MP at the centre of the row.
U-turn aside, a significant proportion of our ‘honourable’ members of parliament voted apparently with a scant sense of honour, showing that they were more concerned with pals than principles.
Keir Starmer said that the Prime Minister’s behaviour was “corrupt and contemptible” when he attempted to “protect” Tory MP Owen Paterson, after having broken lobbying rules.
These are serious allegations. Surely we expect more of our Prime Minister and MPs?
North East Bylines took a look at how our North East MPs voted.
To give some background – the North East has 29 MPs in total; 18 Labour and 11 Conservative. All of the Tyne and Wear MPs are Labour.
No Labour MPs voted for this bill (with the now famous ‘Leadsom amendment’).
Out of the 11 Conservative MPs, 8 voted in favour and 3 had no vote recorded. Of these two were Anne-Marie Trevelyan and Guy Opperman, MPs for Berwick and Hexham respectively.
You can see the photos of those who voted for the bill at the top of this article.
It will certainly make an interesting study to look at the voting records of all of these MPs and to see how they vote in the future…
Read more by Yvonne Wancke
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