Points of Order
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Alexander Stafford
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a well-known matter of parliamentary protocol that when hon. Members carry out visits and duties in another Member’s seat, they notify the Member prior to their visit. Time and time again, other hon. Members have visited my seat on official duties and not notified me. They include, recently, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) and repeated unnotified visits by the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey). Perhaps the shadow Transport Secretary’s notification got delayed, just like the woeful bus service the Mayor of South Yorkshire is presiding over, and perhaps the shadow Defence Secretary did not want to announce coming to Brexit-voting Rother Valley on the back of Labour’s new plans for closer military ties with the EU. Madam Deputy Speaker, please can you confirm that MPs on official visits to other Members’ seats should always notify sitting Members?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Before I—[Interruption.] Thank you very much. We do not need any further interventions, but I will take a further point of order if the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne would like to make one.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Unlike the hon. Gentleman, me and my family actually live in Rotherham and if I notified him every time I was in his constituency, I would simply swamp his inbox.
Alexander Stafford
Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Alexander Stafford
Madam Deputy Speaker, my family live in Rother Valley as well and he knows that. To say my family do not live there is disgraceful. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman was embarrassed about standing next to councillors who did not report the child sexual exploitation in Rotherham. Perhaps that is why he is smiling and doing that. That was reported by the Guido website.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. We will now calm down. [Interruption.] I do not need the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) at the back to tell other Members to sit down. If the hon. Member for Rother Valley has to sit down, I will tell him to sit down.
Let us just clear up this matter in its various aspects. First of all, it is understandable that the hon. Member for Rother Valley is angry about his family being brought into it. I am quite sure that the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne, on the Opposition Front Bench, will wish to withdraw that part of his remarks and allow the House to concentrate on the fact that he does enter privately the hon. Gentleman’s constituency frequently. [Interruption.] Will the hon. Member for Rother Valley please be quiet and allow me to answer the question that he raised? Now, will the right hon. Gentleman remove from his remarks the mention of the hon. Gentleman’s family? [Interruption.]
I think we are getting a little confused here, largely because there is noise and when people shout I cannot hear what other people are saying. I think there has been some confusion, so let us just sort it out. The right hon. Gentleman did not say anything about your family, Mr Stafford. He said something about his own family and where they live. It is up to him—[Interruption.] Will you stop talking while I am answering the question? The right hon. Gentleman did not say anything about Mr Stafford’s family. If he had done that, that would be quite wrong and I would be the first to defend Mr Stafford. What we are talking about is a situation where Mr Stafford is quite rightly annoyed that the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne and the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley have, on several occasions, gone into his constituency not on private business, but on party business or otherwise. Where that occurs, it should not.
For the guidance of Members—although I know that the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne does not need it, because he is a long-standing Member of this House and one who normally behaves with absolute honour in all that he does—we have the “Rules of behaviour and courtesies in the House of Commons”. This little booklet was recently sent, in its newly amended version, to all Members of the House. Quite often, when Mr Speaker and those of us who occupy the Chair have to deal with points of order here in the Chamber, it is because Members have not read it, or they might have read it or looked at the cover but not taken in its contents. I would be most grateful if everybody would look at it. It was sent very recently. This is a new version, published in November 2023. It is one of my few published books! I joke that it is mine, but it is not mine. It was put together by the House, but Mr Speaker and the Deputy Speakers had very considerable input into it. It would be helpful if Members were to take on board what it says.
The hon. Gentleman, Mr Stafford, has made a perfectly reasonable point of order. It has been responded to by the right hon. Gentleman, Mr Healey. I think we can leave it at that. Thank you.
Doncaster Sheffield Airport
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Alexander Stafford(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
If it is about the contents of the speech, it is not a point of order.
Alexander Stafford
On a point of order, I said in my speech that I had read the plan; the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) is now saying that I have not. For the record, he cannot just say things completely contradicting something that I have said a few minutes before. It is completely disingenuous.
Madam Deputy Speaker
No—we cannot have “disingenuous”. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could say “bewildering” or something like that.
Madam Deputy Speaker
That will do. It is obvious to me that there are differences of opinion about facts and the interpretation of facts. That is why there are different sides of the House and why we have a system in which everybody gets the chance to state their opinions and facts. Let us not get heated about it.
Sir David Amess Summer Adjournment
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Alexander Stafford(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Thank you. This has been an excellent debate—quite a contrast to the rest of the week—and a fitting remembrance of our dear friend Sir David. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered matters to be raised before the forthcoming adjournment.
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Yesterday in this House I raised on point of order that images of my wife and two children have been used this week in paid-for Facebook adverts by the Rother Valley Labour party.
Today my office received this message from a constituent:
“I’ve arrived at work to 4 people being asked to leave the carpark”—
this was outside the Dinnington Tesco in my constituency —with
“a petition to remove Alex Stafford.”
She then says that she was shown an image of
“Alex, the wife and kids”.
Let me be clear about what has been reported by several constituents. The Rother Valley Labour party is using images featuring my wife and two young children, one of whom is only seven months old, to drum up anger and sentiment against me and my family.
On top of this, a former Rother Valley Labour councillor said today on a Rother Valley Facebook page:
“Stafford made the mistake of posting family images on Facebook…he is only in a hole because he dug it himself…he is happy for his family to stand metaphorically in the road on a busy bus route.”
He is stating that my wife and my two children are fair game because they feature on Facebook. What sort of level of politics have we sunk to when children are being used to attack other politicians and to whip up hatred?
I am again calling on the leader of the Labour party, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), and the Labour Chief Whip, the right hon. Member for Tynemouth (Sir Alan Campbell), to immediately suspend all the Rother Valley Labour party members involved, and to speak to me tonight about these incidents, which I can only see as being designed to create anger and hatred against my family. I am also calling on my fellow Rotherham borough MPs—the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) and the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion)—to condemn the use of pictures of my family in party political attacks.
This is not “campaigning”, as some have suggested. These are pictures of my young children, being used to whip up anger and hatred, and being shown to people in order to create an environment of intimidation. This needs to stop before we have another horrific incident.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I took the point of order that he made yesterday on the same subject, and I appreciate that matters have deteriorated since yesterday. As I said to the hon. Gentleman and to the House yesterday, I have to be very careful in dealing with these matters here in public in the Chamber, because this really is a matter of security. I have made sure that our security team here at the House of Commons will give the hon. Gentleman every assistance that they possibly can, because these matters are taken very seriously.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned various Members of this House. I appreciate that he was, of course, not criticising them, but having mentioned them, I hope he will give them notice, if he has not already done so—[Interruption.] I am grateful to him for confirming that he has already done so. I appreciate that he was not criticising any Member of this House, but merely drawing the matter to their attention. I repeat that these are matters that are taken very seriously.
Points of Order
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Alexander Stafford
Madam Deputy Speaker
I thank the hon. Gentleman. That is probably as good as I am going to get. He will appreciate that it is not for the Chair to assess whether evidence given to a Committee is accurate, but I understand why he wants to raise the point before the House today. If the Committee concludes that information has been given that is not in fact accurate, it will be up to the Committee to decide how to pursue the matter and possibly construct another evidence session. I thank the hon. Gentleman for drawing this important matter to the attention of the House.
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Rother Valley Labour party has this week been running paid-for Facebook attack adverts featuring images of my wife and my two children, one of whom is seven months old and one of whom is 27 months old. Images of my young family have also been circulated online in an attack post by a Rotherham Labour councillor. Like many MPs in this place, my family and I have faced death threats and threats of violence, and the circulation of images on attack posts, including by Rother Valley Labour members who I had to block previously for harassment, puts the lives of my family at further risk.
I have written to the leader of the Labour party, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), asking him to suspend the Labour party members involved and to formally investigate the individuals responsible. What further guidance can you offer, Madam Deputy Speaker, to political parties and journalists on the unauthorised usage of pictures of MPs’ young children and families?
Madam Deputy Speaker
I thank the hon. Gentleman for having given me notice of his point of order.
This is an appalling situation. Regardless of political party persuasion, everyone present in the Chamber will share my serious concern about the situation that the hon. Gentleman has described. I will be careful about what I say, and I urge him to be careful about what he says, because this is really a matter of security, and we do not discuss security matters on the Floor of the House. I hope that he is in contact with the parliamentary security team about it. If he would care to contact me privately, I will make sure that the case is taken up by the parliamentary security team.
I cannot be too strong in making the point from the Chair—Mr Speaker has said this many times—that we all deplore any attempts to attack the families of those of us who are engaged in politics. That is bad enough when those families are grown up and able to defend themselves, but it is nothing less than appalling when the family concerned are very small children. The hon. Gentleman and his family have my sympathy, but also my attention. Let us take this matter forward and make sure that the parliamentary security authorities can deal with it.
Randox Covid Contracts
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Alexander Stafford(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Alexander Stafford
I am just surprised that the Opposition Benches are empty for an Opposition day debate when so many people claim that they want to discuss the issue. It is your debate. Perhaps you could explain where your Back Benchers are? I am intrigued because your side called it. Do they really care?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. Now that the hon. Gentleman has properly intervened and addressed the House not from a sedentary position, I can officially hear him, and I will just make it clear that he should not say “you”. The substance of what he says is not a matter for me, but he should not say “you”.
Madam Deputy Speaker
We have had quite a lot of that today, including during Prime Minister’s questions. Just do not do it. Let us try to keep to the rules.