The Guardian - UK (2022-04-30)

Saturday 30 April 2022 The Guardian •

7

Parliament

Foreign states

‘may pose risk

via all-party

groups’

Johnson’s

strategy

Tory MPs

at odds over

risk that PM

will gamble

on a snap

election

Ben Quinn

Hostile foreign states and others

pose a “real risk” of gaining access

and wielding infl uence through all-

party parliamentary proups (APPGs),

the Commons standards committee

has warned.

Calling for major reforms to avert

what it described as the “next great

parliamentary scandal ”, it also voiced

concern that a dramatic rise in the

number of the informal cross-party

groups also risked “inappropriate

infl uence and access” because they

were so diffi cult to monitor.

The warnings come in the wake

of an unprecedented security warn-

ing from MI5 that was circulated

to MPs and peers earlier this year ,

which accused a lawyer of seeking

to improperly infl uence parliamen-

tarians on behalf of China’s ruling

Communist party.

Barry Gardiner, the former chair

of the now disbanded group, had

received more than £500,000 in

donations from Christine Lee before

the warning was issued.

The report – All-Party Parliamen-

tary Groups: Improving Governance

and Regulation – was warned in

private evidence by the Commons

speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, that indis-

criminate engagement with state

actors who were hostile to UK inter-

ests did not take adequate account

of the potential security risks to

parliament

“I worry that we are not joining

up our security and the threats that

we have,” said Hoyle, in his oral evi-

dence for the report published today.

“These people are not our friends.

“Some are our friends, but they

have intentions and objectives,

which worries me. If we are not care-

ful, the security implication for the

opening up of parliament is very, very

worrying.”

The report also comes after an

investigation earlier this year by

the Guardian and Open Democracy

found that more than £13m has been

poured into a growing network of

MPs’ interest groups by private fi rms

including healthcare bodies, arms

companies and tech giants, fuelling

concerns over the potential for back-

door infl uence.

The report states that “improper

access” by paid lobbyists seeking to

wield infl uence through APPGs was

a risk that had been identifi ed as far

back as 2013 but that increased trans-

parency which was then introduced

has not mitigated the risk in the way

that it had been hoped at the time.

The threat from hostile overseas

states seeking to wield infl uence dis-

creetly through APPGs was one that

had only developed in recent years,

added the MPs behind the report,

who said that they had been per-

suaded by the evidence of Hoyle that

this was “a very real risk, which needs

addressing with some urgency.

APPGs are informal groups rep-

resenting MPs’ and peers’ interests,

from China and Russia to cancer, dig-

ital regulation, longevity and jazz.

They must be chaired by MPs but are

often run or funded by lobbyists and

corporate donors seeking to infl uence

government policy.

The standards committee chair,

Chris Bryant, said that APPGs

“must never be a backdoor means

of peddling infl uence or pursuing a

commercial interest”.

Profi le

Neil Parish

At the end of a live GB News
inter view just three days ago , Neil
Par ish was asked in passing for
his views on claims that a Tory
MP had been caught watching
porn ography.
“If you have got 650 members
of parliament in what is a very
intense area you are going to get
people that step over the line,”
he replied , poker-faced. “I don’t
think there is necessarily a huge
culture [of that behaviour] here
but it does have to be dealt with
and dealt with seriously and I
think that is what the whips will
do in our whips’ offi ce. ”
After an unremarkable 12-year
parliamentary career , the MP for
Tiverton and Honiton now fi nds
himself at the centre of a political
storm after it emerged that the
Tory whip had been removed
from him over the allegations.
A farmer and former M EP,
Parish was part of the 2010
parliamentary intake. Since then,
he has avoided controversy and
has served since 2015 as chair of
the environment, food and rural
aff airs select committee (Efra).
One of the few areas where
he has gone against the grain
of his own party has been in his
opposition to re wilding, which he
opposes despite it being endorsed
by the PM and most of the party.
One Tory source with previous
experience working with him on
the Efra committee described him
as quiet and hard-working.
“He would not have been on
the top of my list of suspects,”
they said, adding that Parish, 65,
is “rather boring actually”.
Parish still lives on the family
farm in Somerset, according to his
website, which said he is married
and has two children and two
grand children. He employs his
wife as a junior secretary, accord-
ing to his register of interests.
His website also lists “the pol-
itics of Africa” as being among
his other interests, adding that
a ban on him re-entering Zim-
babwe after he criticised Robert
Mugabe’s regime in his capacity
as an election monitor remained
in place to this day. The MP had
said this week that he also wore
“as a badge of honour” the fact
that he was among more than 280
MPs “sanctioned” by Russia.
Records of his parliamentary
voting record , meanwhile, show
he has tended to go in the same
direction as Tory colleagues,
though he was among those who
opposed Brexit in 2016.
In the past, Parish had gained
some fans among animal welfare
campaigners when he tried to
stop the government signing
post-Brexit trade deals that would
have devalued animal welfare.
However nature campaigners
said yesterday they hoped he
would now be replaced on the
committee by someone more in
favour of nature restoration than
Parish, who usually takes the side
of landowners and farmers.
Ben Quinn and Helena Horton

 Boris Johnson

could face being

ousted by his

own party or

choose to put his

leadership to a

public vote to

save his No 

incumbency

PHOTOGRAPH: TAYFUN

SALCI/ZUMA/REX/

SHUTTERSTOCK

Rowena Mason

Heather Stewart

Rebel Conservative MPs fear Boris

Johnson could gamble on a general

election within months in a make-

or-break bid to save his premiership

• but the party chairman, Oliver Dow-
  den, has privately dismissed the idea
  as likely to be electorally disastrous.
  One MP hoping to oust Johnson
  said they are “deadly serious” in their
  belief that the prime minister could
  seek to win himself another term by
  calling a vote this autumn, especially
  if he can buy time in No 10 by winning
  a confi dence vote before the summer.
  Some of Johnson’s critics are con-
  vinced the threshold of 54 Tory MPs
  required to trigger a confi dence vote
  could be crossed shortly after further
  expected fi nes over the Partygate
  scandal , a bad result in next week’s
  local elections or the loss of the mar-
  ginal Wakefi eld parliamentary seat
  in its upcoming byelection. But they
  think the PM stands a good chance
  of winning a vote with the support
  of more than 50% of his MPs – which
  would give him a year’s reprieve.
  One Conservative MP said Dow-
  den had been dampening speculation
  of an early general election by pri-
  vately reassuring colleagues there is
  “no way” Johnson would go to the
  polls when his ratings are so poor and
  while Labour is ahead. But the MP
  also argued that if Johnson faces a

serious choice between being ousted

by his own party and putting himself

to a vote of the general public, many

believe he would choose the latter.

“He could try to run another anti-

establishment campaign pitching

himself against MPs in parliament,

that’s what we most fear,” they said.

One senior party source insisted an

autumn election was “not the work-

ing assumption ” and highlighted

forthcoming boundary changes,

which are expected to benefi t the

Tories and which would not come

into force until 2023.

More than 6,800 seats in 200 coun-

cils across Britain are up for grabs

in next Thursday’s local elections ,

including every seat in London, in

Scotland and in Wales.

Both main parties are playing

down their prospects, with Labour

pointing to their showing the last

time these seats were contested in

2018, and the Conservatives high-

lighting the fact they are trailing in

national polls.

Tory strategists claim they are in

serious trouble in the fl agship Lon-

don councils of Wandsworth and

Westminster. Labour insist these

are unlikely targets but have hopes

of taking Barnet in outer London,

which has been mainly Tory-con-

trolled since it was formed in 1964.

Outside the capital, the Tories

hope to make gains in places such as

Stoke-on-Trent and Sandwell in the

West Midlands, where they took par-

liamentary seats at the 2019 general

election but are well behind Labour

at council level.

Conservative MPs will be watching

developments in their constituencies

closely, with advances for opposition

parties pointing to potential trouble

at a general election. A senior Tory

source played down the risk. But they

added: “It’s well known local elec-

tions can be used as a protest vote.”

The Lib Dems had made modest

gains in disgraced former MP Owen

Paterson’s North Shropshire seat at

recent local elections and overturn ed

a near-23,000 majority to oust the

Conservatives last year.

Labour sources say the party will

be monitoring the council results

particularly closely in 50 key parlia-

mentary seats it believes it needs to

gain in order to win the next election –

including Stevenage, Bury North and

South, and Glasgow.

“If we have a night where we’re

showing the right kind of progress

in the sort of places where we need to

win at the next election, that’s good

for us,” they said, adding that Labour

will also be happy if Tory MPs con-

tinue to procrastinate about Johnson ,

given his poor personal ratings.

Dowden told Conservative activ-

ists at his party’s spring conference

in Blackpool that Johnson saw these

local elections as the start of a two-

year campaign, building up to the

next general election. He told report-

ers recently that he intends to fi ght

the next general election, and could

not imagine resigning over Partygate.

But some backbenchers are con-

cerned the government appears to be

running out of ideas. A cabinet brain-

storming session about the cost of

living earlier this week result ed in

few concrete ideas aside from mak-

ing MOTs two-yearly – a plan swiftly

condemned by motorists’ group the

AA. Meanwhile the chancellor, Rishi

Sunak, appeared to be fl irting with

the Labour policy of a windfall tax

on energy companies this week, after

having repeatedly rejected it.

‘Johnson could run

a campaign pitching

himself against MPs

in parliament’

Conservative MP

Anonymously

£13m

Amount of funding poured into

MPs’ interest groups by private

fi rms, the report has found