Privilege: Conduct of Right Hon. Boris Johnson

Karl Turner Excerpts

Monday 19th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

Let me begin by commending the Privileges Committee and its report. I thank each and every member on it, both Conservative members and other members. They had an incredibly difficult task, and the pressure, media attention and scrutiny upon them were incredibly high. I thank them for the job that they have done.

Anybody who reads this incredibly detailed and in-depth report has to conclude that the reality is that Boris Johnson was a liar. There is no question here. Every time he stood up, I thought he was spewing out complete and unadulterated untruths in this Chamber. One would often be surprised that he was getting away with the things he was saying, but it is now proven that he is dishonest.

I have concerns about questions that are raised by this report. The public will wonder why on earth Boris Johnson was entitled to more than £250,000 in legal aid. There is no example of any other Member—any former or serving Minister—being before what used to be the Standards and Privileges Committee and receiving money from the taxpayer to pay lawyers. Johnson got 250,000 quid from the taxpayer and the Prime Minister allowed that to happen. I say to the Prime Minister that he should say no now. We know that Johnson is a liar and that he has been discredited, so the Prime Minister should force him to pay up himself. An ordinary member of the public who earns more than £12,570 does not get legal aid, and often they are facing very difficult legal proceedings. Boris Johnson has earned some £6 million since he left this place, and he has just done a deal with one newspaper for £1 million a year to write a column, most of which will undoubtedly be untruths. People do not understand how it is possible, especially in the circumstances of a cost of living crisis, for the taxpayer to be paying his legal bill.

The second point that people will be concerned about is the honours list. The very idea that somebody who has left here discredited, having been convicted by a Committee of the House of lying, should be entitled to put people in the House of Lords or give them honours from the King is just unfathomable to people, especially when we read at the weekend that some of those on his honours list were partying during lockdown. We saw boozy shenanigans at Tory HQ—what utter contempt for this country.

[Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. On the revelations about the party that took place at Conservative party headquarters, as we all know, some of those people have been given honours by the former Prime Minister. Does he agree that those honours should be withdrawn?

[Karl Turner]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The people, who are perhaps more important than us, will be wondering how on earth it is possible for liar Johnson to leave here and for the Prime Minister to nod through a list of honours for people who were boozing it up in Tory central office when others could not see dying relatives. It is utterly deplorable. As for anybody who thinks that that is all right, I suggest that they get out there, knock on doors and see what their electorate think of them.

Thirdly, Johnson gets £115,000 a year for his office costs. We are talking about 115,000 quid a year from the taxpayer to run an office to assist him as a former Prime Minister. People will not get that. They do not understand that. Let me warn Conservative Members that it will cost them at the ballot box. If we allow that nonsense to carry on, people will not be happy about it.

Fourthly, where is the Prime Minister when we are debating something so important? I was elected in 2010 and this is the most important piece of House business that I have witnessed. The very idea that a former Prime Minister has left here to avoid further scrutiny by this House, after a Committee of this place has found that he is a liar, is pretty deplorable, but the fact that the Prime Minister has not got the bottle to be here to say whether he agrees or disagrees with the Committee’s report is an absolute scandal. He should be ashamed of himself.

Finally, I do not know what happened during lockdown—I can speak only for myself and my family—but it is despicable, and it adds insult to injury, that Johnson alleged as he left, in a letter to the Chair of the Committee, that other parties were going on. In effect, he was imputing that of people in this place, one of whom was a member of the Committee. I do not know whether that is true—perhaps it is a matter for the Met police to investigate, I know not—but the fact that his parting gesture was to do that speaks to the fact that the man is a complete and utter disgrace and he should never get anywhere near this place again.

Strengthening Standards in Public Life

Karl Turner Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be called in what I think is an extremely important debate, and it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker).

Let me begin by thanking my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition. I think Members on both sides of the House would say, if they were being honest, that without his leadership on this issue nothing would be happening, and I think members of the public can see that as well. I also want to thank the Leader of the Opposition personally, because I have inundated him in the last few weeks and days. I have barracked him constantly with my opinion of the issue and what I think needs to happen for us to see change. I have contacted him so much that at one point I feared he might seek injunctive relief to try and stop me, but thank goodness, he did not. He welcomed members of the parliamentary Labour party engaging with him in these discussions, because he takes this very seriously.

I am happy to say that I am a fan of banning second jobs across the board. I signed early-day motion 627, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon). I accept that there are complexities. I do not think that my constituents in east Hull—or anyone in the country, in fact—would begrudge a Member of Parliament’s being a doctor, a surgeon, a nurse or a paramedic; those are people undertaking incredibly important public service, doing jobs for the public good. However, I think there must be limits on times, or perhaps on earnings.

[Bob Seely]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very sensible speech, and he is exactly right. I am a reservist; I do a few days every so often for the reserve. Does he recognise, however, that a director of a family company is also doing a deserving job, because he or she is employing people and creating the wealth that the public services need?

[Karl Turner]

I accept that point. I think that there are complexities involving Members who run family businesses. Perhaps they ought to think about winding them down. I know that some Conservative Members have done just that: they have been elected and come here, and then run their businesses down or passed them to other family members. There are also complexities around those hon. Members who want to write books, for example. It is incredibly important for people to be able to express themselves. When we get into the arguments about freedom of expression and so forth, we get into real legal complexities and difficulties.

I am bound to say that it is complex for lawyers who come into the House. When I was elected in 2010, I was a junior in the law—I was towards the latter end of a second six pupillage—but it was right that I had clients where I was instructed in their cases and there was potentially pay for those cases that happened a little after being elected. Lawyers who are elected but who have instructions have professional responsibilities to their client. If they were elected to Parliament, but they were acting for a client, either a lay client or the professional client who instructed them, they would be expected to wind that down and eventually pass it on. There are complexities around that.

The nub of the issue for me is that, speaking for my constituents, they think it incredible that Members of Parliament are earning, I think, £81,932 a year, three times the average wage and nearly four times the average wage of the constituency I represent. They think it unbelievable—contemptible even—that a Member of Parliament needs to earn from a second job. Some of those second jobs, the consultancies and directorships, pay eye-watering amounts of money. The idea that a Member of this House can spend time being an MP while earning almost a million quid a year on the side is utterly contemptible, in my humble opinion.

To those who use the defence that we need experience from outside this House and a rich tapestry of people to represent the interests of the country, I say that it strikes me that we do not see Members going off and doing a 10-hour shift at Maccy D’s in their constituencies. We do not see them going off and doing the other jobs that are done by real people in the real world. Cranswick Country Foods plc, for example, is desperate for workers right now, but I am not going to queue up, frankly speaking, to pluck chickens or turkeys ready for Christmas. That is the point that the electorate worry about: these MPs’ jobs are paying staggering amounts of money, but they are not the jobs that people recognise as second jobs for them—second jobs working to try to earn an extra few quid because they are desperate to feed their families.

I admit that I am a fan of banning second jobs, but I accept that there are complexities. We have to work together to find the solution to this issue, but for the Government to try to hide behind the pretence they have been running recently that it is necessary to bring experience to this place is just a defence people simply cannot believe or trust.

Committee on Standards

Karl Turner Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

Absolutely. The hon. Member brings me to the malicious, malign and utterly disgraceful attempt to undermine and smear our Standards Commissioner. We heard the Business Secretary say last week that the commissioner should consider her position. She should not be considering her position. The Leader of the House should be considering his position, as should the Prime Minister. They needed to undermine the Standards Commissioner in order for their silly, stupid plan to work for them—and, of course, it has not worked at all. So what now? The Government have failed properly to apologise or recognise what they have to done, or to show any sort of contrition—

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

No shame.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

I had not intended to speak in the debate, but I was prompted by the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), because it became incredibly apparent to me and, I suspect, to Members from all parts of the House that had she been in charge, this chaos would never have happened. This chaos is the making entirely of one person: the Prime Minister. When the Leader of the House comes to the Dispatch Box and says, “The reason we made this mistake was because we had sympathy for Mr Paterson”, it is not credible, because what happened the very next day is that Cabinet Ministers were instructed by the Chief Whip or the Prime Minister to go out on the TV and defend it. It would never have happened under the previous Prime Minister. It need not be said, but it became apparent to me that both the Leader of the House and the Chief Whip were struggling to look at the right hon. Member for Maidenhead or my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire).

Business of the House

Karl Turner Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Just for the record, the hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) might want to know that the Leader of the House last week said how important it was to see Stonehenge, as he travels past in on the A303.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab) [V]]

As you know, Mr Speaker, we have a public health emergency in Hull, with the highest covid infection rate in the country, but my city is being left in the dark with no contact from Ministers and we are being hung out to dry without any additional financial support. Could we please have a statement as to why no Government Minister has picked up the phone to our council leader, Councillor Stephen Brady?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I know this matter came up in the debate yesterday and that the Paymaster General, my right hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), responded to say that

“during the course of the debate I arranged for the covid-19 taskforce—who, through the Cabinet Office and my office, will co-ordinate this—to have a meeting with the hon. Lady”—

the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson)—

“ and any other people, whether colleagues in this place or the local resilience forum.”—[Official Report, 18 November 2020; Vol. 684, c. 430.]

So I believe that this is in hand, as of yesterday.

Business of the House

Karl Turner Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I note my right hon. Friend’s point, of which the Government are aware. The Bill needs to progress with support in this House. Emergency legislation is best done and tends to go through successfully only when there is widespread consensus, so his point is important. Unfortunately, I cannot say what proceedings will be in the other place, and I do not think it would be right for me to try; it would be slightly impertinent of me to say what their lordships will do.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

There is a lot of rivalry in the rugby league, especially in Hull, where we are blessed to have two super league teams: Hull FC and Hull Kingston Rovers. It is clear that rugby league clubs need a special scheme of support. I spoke with both clubs’ chairmen yesterday evening, and they are very worried about the survival of their clubs as a result of covid-19. Can we have a statement from a Minister on what plans there are to financially support rugby league clubs at this incredibly worrying time, so that they can survive to not next week, next month or next year, but for the next 125 years?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

A lot of businesses and sporting organisations are worried. I reiterate what the Chancellor has said: everything that can be done will be done to ensure the stability of the economy through this period and that businesses that are well founded are able to continue.

Business of the House

Karl Turner Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

This is obviously a matter of interest to many Members, as it is raised every week. The Government hear that, and I am sure the Backbench Business Committee hears it, too. As an immediate stopgap, I would point my hon. Friend to Foreign and Commonwealth Office questions on Tuesday 4 February.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

P&O Ferries in Hull is continuing to exploit foreign seafarers, which is risking lives and costing British jobs. It proposes to replace all crews with Filipinos. A British rating works two weeks on, two weeks off and is paid fairly; a Filipino will be required to work six months on, doing 12-hour shifts and being paid £60 per day. May we have Government time to debate this really important issue? People might die.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I accept the importance of the issue and its importance for British seafarers employed by P&O. I actually think that the matter is more suitable for an Adjournment debate in the first instance, and I would encourage the hon. Gentleman to get in touch with your good offices, Mr Speaker, to see if one is available.