Member of Parliament Scott Benton has lost his appeal against a proposed 35-day suspension. The said suspension is related to accusations of him being willing to partake in illicit lobbying on behalf of the gambling industry.
The Blackpool South MP was caught in the act by undercover journalists at The Times last spring who pretended to be gambling investors and arranged a meeting with Mr Benton. Although Mr Benton declined an “expert adviser” position offered by the supposed investors, he did make a series of offers during the meeting. Namely, had the meeting involved legitimate representatives of a gambling business that accepted his offers and a deal had been made, Benton would have lobbied for changes to the Gambling White Paper that would have benefited the gambling industry. He also offered to leak the then-unreleased White Paper two days before its official publication and suggested that he could have other MPs in on the deal.
The Times’ probe prompted the Standards Committee to launch its own investigation into the matter. According to the findings, Mr Benton had breached the Code of Conduct for Members of Parliament, and his actions had harmed the integrity of the House of Commons. A 35-day suspension was proposed as punishment, a decision that Mr Benton appealed this January along with the allegations on grounds of the investigative process being flawed. In his appeal, Mr Brenton alleged that the Committee’s claims were not factually correct nor supported by adequate evidence and that the process in and of itself was flawed due to the Committee’s decision being supposedly leaked.
Mr Benton Was Unable to Prove the Claims Made in his Appeal
The Independent Expert Panel was in charge of determining what course of action should be taken in relation to Mr Benton’s appeal. The Panel initially considered that his allegations surrounding the supposed leak could have merit, as the confidentiality leak was something the Committee had not covered in its report.
In light of Mr Brenton’s accusations, the Panel reached out to the Committee, and Panel members ultimately deemed the Committee’s response regarding the matter to be satisfactory. What is more, contrary to Mr Benton’s appeal, the Panel did not find any credible information that could officially confirm that a leak had, indeed, occurred. The Panel also took into consideration what factors the Committee had taken into account when it came to the decision to suspend Mr Benton, and determined that the Committee had “approached the task properly.”
This led to the Panel members determining Mr Benton’s claims to be “misconceived or erroneous,” and they ultimately dismissed his appeal and declared the Committee’s proposal for a 35-day suspension upheld. This means that the Gambling White Paper lobbying scandal as a whole could ultimately result in a by-election, which might result in the Conservatives losing the Blackpool South parliament seat.
- Author
Daniel Williams
