Tag: Conservative Party in UK

Holders of public office “must avoid placing themselves under any obligation to people or organisations that might try inappropriately to influence their work”.

It started when an investigation by Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone found that former Northern Ireland Sec. Owen Paterson had repeatedly approached officials on behalf of two companies that were paying him more than £100,000. He protested his innocence. Boris Johnson first tried to shield Paterson from the lobbying charge.

"Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having."