Former Tory MP Owen Paterson is taking the government to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) over Parliament's ruling that he broke lobbying rules.
The staunch Brexiteer complained to the European body in September, saying his right to privacy was breached.
Today, the court formally approach the UK government for its response to the complaint.
A notice published by the court, reads: “The applicant complains that his Article 8 rights were infringed, as the public finding that he had breached the Code of Conduct damaged his good reputation, and that the process by which the allegations against him were investigated and considered was not fair in many basic respects.”
The veteran Tory MP quit before he could be suspended for 30 days over a report which found him guilty of "egregious" breaches of lobbying rules.
His case became embroiled in a row after Conservatives - including Boris Johnson - voted to tear up ethics rules in order to spare him from suspension.
But the then-PM eventually backed down after widespread fury.
A 175-page report found the MP broke four parts of the MPs’ Code of Conduct after lobbying for two firms that paid him a combined £112k a year.
He made approaches from 2016 to 2018 to the Food Standards Agency about Randox, a testing firm, and meat firm Lynn's Country Foods.
Mr Paterson cited an exemption where MPs can highlight a “serious wrong or substantial injustice”.
He said these included identifying antibiotics in milk, nitrites in bacon and concerns over the calibration of lab equipment.
But the report said this exemption only applied once, and 14 of his other approaches breached rules on “paid advocacy”.
Separately, Mr Paterson also failed to declare an interest in Lynn’s in four e-mails, and used parliamentary offices and notepaper for his business interests, the report found.
The report was written by the independent Parliamentary Standards Commissioner and approved by the Standards Committee of cross-party MPs.
Branding his lobbying “egregious”, the inquiry concluded: “No previous case of paid advocacy has seen so many breaches or such a clear pattern of confusion between the private and public interest.”
Mr Paterson indicated he would fight the case all the way up to the ECHR last October.
He told his local newspaper, the Shropshire Star the ruling against him was “really shocking and absurd.
He added: “I can not accept this, I have to clear my name if it means going to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg."
