{"id":2077,"date":"2016-10-31T17:25:05","date_gmt":"2016-10-31T21:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=2077"},"modified":"2016-11-01T10:15:53","modified_gmt":"2016-11-01T14:15:53","slug":"keith-vaz-could-lose-justice-committee-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2016\/10\/31\/keith-vaz-could-lose-justice-committee-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Keith Vaz could lose justice committee post"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"u-underline\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/keithvaz\" data-link-name=\"auto-linked-tag\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\">Keith Vaz<\/a>, the former chair of the home affairs select committee, could be stopped from joining the justice committee following a rare parliamentary manoeuvre by a Conservative MP.<\/p>\n<p>MPs will vote on Monday night whether to appoint the MP for Leicester East to the powerful committee, which oversees Britain\u2019s justice system.<\/p>\n<p>Vaz, a former Labour minister, was<a class=\"u-underline\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2016\/sep\/06\/keith-vaz-resigns-as-chair-of-home-affairs-select-committee\" data-link-name=\"in body link\"> forced to resign<\/a> from the home affairs committee in September following <a class=\"u-underline\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/2016\/sep\/09\/police-to-investigate-keith-vaz-allegations\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">claims that he paid for two male escorts<\/a> at a time when the committee was investigating prostitution.<\/p>\n<p>Claims that Vaz offered to pay for cocaine for the prostitutes are the subject of a complaint to the police and the House of Commons standards watchdog.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"element element-rich-link element-rich-link--tag element--thumbnail element-rich-link--upgraded\" data-component=\"rich-link-tag\" data-link-name=\"rich-link-tag\">\n<div class=\"rich-link tone-news--item \">\n<div class=\"rich-link__container\">\n<div class=\"rich-link__image-container u-responsive-ratio\">Despite the complaints, <a class=\"u-underline\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2016\/sep\/04\/keith-vaz-one-scandal-too-many-for-the-publicity-seeking-mp\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">Vaz<\/a> is standing to fill a vacant seat on the Commons justice committee. Some MPs have backed him for the role, and the nomination was due to be endorsed by MPs on Monday.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>However, in a highly unusual move, the Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen has forced a vote on the appointment. It is believed to be the first time a vote on such an appointment has been held for decades.<\/p>\n<p>Bridgen wrote to the Speaker, John Bercow, to lodge a formal complaint and told the Guardian he hopes it will lead to a debate between MPs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think he\u2019s fit to be on that committee. He only resigned from the home affairs select committee eight weeks ago. It\u2019s completely inappropriate. He is still under investigation, it will bring parliament into disrepute,\u201d Bridgen said.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to a possible police investigation, Vaz, 59, could face an inquiry by the parliamentary standards commissioner, Kathryn Hudson.<\/p>\n<p>She has announced she will conduct an official investigation into Vaz\u2019s conduct and determine whether he breached the MPs\u2019 code of conduct, which covers public interest and whether damage was done to the reputation of the Commons.<\/p>\n<p>The investigation will also examine whether he broke conflict of interest rules as chair of the home affairs committee.<\/p>\n<p>Vaz could not be reached for comment.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2016\/oct\/31\/keith-vaz-could-lose-justice-committee-post-in-unusual-mps-vote\" target=\"_blank\">The Guardian<\/p>\n<p><\/a>Update: More than 150 Conservative MPs have defeated the bid to stop Keith Vaz from being appointed to the Justice select committee while he is under investigation over an alleged sex scandal.<\/p>\n<p>It is believed that the Whips office told Conservative MPs to vote for Mr Vaz in order to avoid setting a precedent of objecting to appointments, which could undermine the whole system.<\/p>\n<p>Senior Cabinet members including the Home Secretary Amber Rudd\u00a0and International Trade Secretary Liam Fox were among those MPs whole voted for him to join the committee.<\/p>\n<p>Just\u00a038 Labour MPs, Simon Danczuk, an Independent MP,\u00a0and three DUP MPs also supported his nomination.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Bridgen was prevented from delivering half of his speech amid a clash with the Speaker of the House John Bercow, after raising \u201callegations that (Mr Vaz) abused his position in public office\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Bercow told the MP: \u201cYou will know I take advice on these matters and having treated of matters that are very much within the public domain until now, your speech has strayed from there and I have consulted on this matter and you are now treating of matters that are not in the same category. You must desist.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\">Keith Vaz, the former chair of the home affairs select committee, could be stopped from joining the justice committee following a rare parliamentary manoeuvre by a Conservative MP. MPs will vote on Monday night whether <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2016\/10\/31\/keith-vaz-could-lose-justice-committee-post\/\" title=\"Keith Vaz could lose justice committee post\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[1365,1364,1118],"class_list":{"0":"post-2077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-uk","9":"tag-justice-committee","10":"tag-keith-vaz","11":"tag-vote","12":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2077"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2113,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2077\/revisions\/2113"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}