Latest updates: International development secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan says there is no need for Boris Johnson to attend sleaze debate
- Minister backs ban on MPs having lobbying-based second jobs
- MPs could be barred from consultancy roles in sleaze clampdown
- Tory backlash after minister calls Paterson row a ‘storm in a teacup’
- 30 MPs who could be affected by proposed consultancy ban
- Coronavirus – latest global updates
Good morning. MPs will this afternoon hold a three-hour debate on sleaze, or rather on “the consequences of the decision of the house of 3 November relating to standards”, as the motion more coyly put it. Last night Labour announced that Keir Starmer would be leading for his party, and it challenged Boris Johnson to turn up to. “Boris Johnson needs to attend this debate, answer for his mistakes apologise to the country and take action to undo the damage he has done,” Starmer said, in a statement best described as an aspiration rather than an expectation. (Johnson is even more allergic to apologising than most politicians.) The Lib Dems, who called for today’s emergency debate, have also got their own improbable request; they want Johnson to launch a public inquiry into all the sleaze allegations dogging his government.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the international development secretary, has been doing the morning interview round and, when she was asked on Sky News if Johnson would attend the debate, she said she did not know. (Yesterday government sources were saying Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, would speak for the government, but that was before Labour said they were putting up Starmer.) Asked if Johnson should be speaking, Trevelyan replied:
My opinion would be that no, he shouldn’t be there. He will no doubt, as we all do, have the House of Commons on in his office as he’s dealing with many, many other issues that only the prime minister can deal with. And he will get a briefing of the key issues raised by colleagues from across the house later.
