ANDREW PIERCE: How Vaz still has friends in high places: John Bercow urged MP to 'desist' when he was set to reveal details of police investigation

• e-mail

The astonishing election of disgraced MP Keith Vaz to the Commons justice committee was approved by 203 votes

The astonishing election of disgraced MP Keith Vaz to the Commons justice committee was approved by 203 votes to seven in the Commons.

Several Cabinet ministers bizarrely backed Vaz, who quit the chairmanship of the Home Affairs Select Committee in September after being exposed paying for rent boys and offering to buy them cocaine.

One Tory MP, Andrew Bridgen, defied his party’s Whips to vote against Vaz going on the justice Committee, but fell foul of the Speaker John Bercow.

Bridgen said Vaz, the MP for Leicester East, had ‘abused his position’ and revealed in the Commons that he was also being investigated by Leicestershire Police.

Then, pompous pipsqueak Bercow rose to his feet to warn Bridgen to ‘desist’ from speaking, since the allegations about Leicestershire Police were not in the public domain.

He prevented Bridgen from using Parliamentary privilege to reveal more details about the police inquiry.

Bercow opened the London office of the Silver Star diabetes charity set up by Vaz in 2007. The charity also gave £2,500 to Bercow’s election campaign in 2010.

The pair share a love of curry, and have been photographed together sitting side by side accepting hospitality at a Premier League football match.

After Vaz spoke in the House following his fall from grace over the rent boy scandal, Bercow gave Vaz a reassuring pat on the back in the Commons chamber.

How fortunate for the beleaguered Vazeline that he has friends he can rely on in times of trouble.

One Tory MP, Andrew Bridgen (left), defied his party’s Whips to vote against Vaz going on the Justice Committee, but fell foul of the Speaker John Bercow (right)

Labour can’t even organise a Christmas party. Deputy leader Tom Watson invited the arts world to a festive soiree to ‘meet me and my shadow team’. Sadly the date, Wednesday, November 28, doesn’t exist in any 2016 diary.

‘I hope you can make it,’ says the optimistic Watson.

Deputy leader Tom Watson invited the arts world to a festive soiree to ‘meet me and my shadow team’. Sadly the date, Wednesday, November 28, doesn’t exist in any 2016 diary

 The prezza in Jezza's camp

Having failed three times to win a seat in Parliament, David Prescott was humiliated when he was rejected as Labour candidate in his father John’s former Hull East constituency.

Curiously, Prescott Jnr, who backed Andy Burnham for Labour leader and says ‘my politics have more in common with Owen Smith’ (who challenged Comrade Corbyn for the leadership), has landed a new role as the Labour leader’s speechwriter.

Will a few years of collaborating with Corbyn finally reward young Prescott with the safe Labour seat he hankers after in 2020?

Boris Johnson is saving the taxpayer a few pounds by using Uber minicabs in the capital. The Foreign Secretary has even been known to adopt Churchillian rhetoric to clarify his policy on freedom of movement during rides. Asked by one migrant driver if Boris would have to return to his country of birth, the U.S., after the Brexit vote, I gather he replied: ‘Never!’

Boris Johnson is saving the taxpayer a few pounds by using Uber minicabs in the capital

In the latest MPs’ register of interests Nick Clegg says he was paid £15,000 for hosting the BBC’s Have I Got News For You? Clegg says it involved 12 hours’ work.

Yet Tim Farron, his replacement as Lib Dem leader, was paid only £1,500 for appearing on another episode, albeit as a panellist. Farron says it was three hours’ work. Did it really take Clegg 12 hours to prepare for what seems to be reading from an Autocue?

Meanwhile, Clegg wrote an article condemning Tory MP Zac Goldsmith for resigning as MP for Richmond and triggering a by-election to try to block a third runway at Heathrow Airport. Quick as a flash, Goldsmith retorted: ‘Mr Clegg this by-election is happening because I kept my word. Your party might be in a better shape if you’d done the same.’ Touché.

In the latest MPs’ register of interests Nick Clegg says he was paid £15,000 for hosting the BBC’s Have I Got News For You?

Quote of the week: Sacked Justice Secretary Michael Gove, now a member of the Brexit Commons Select Committee, had a dig at his old adversary, EU president Jean Claude-Juncker. ‘The British people saw that the “reformed” EU we were being invited to stay in was fundamentally unchanged, and the promise that the Union would mend its ways was, like all the other pledges of reform from Maastricht onwards, as empty as Jean-Claude Juncker’s Burgundy bottle after lunch.’ 

When Theresa May became Prime Minister, Ed Vaizey was told by her advisers to expect a call from the PM sacking him as Culture and Communications minister. But he was driving and suddenly had a problem. He writes in The Stage magazine: ‘The Prime Minister was in the position of not being able to sack her telecoms minister because he couldn’t get a signal.’