Conduct of the Right Hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip

Debate between Aaron Bell and Antony Higginbotham

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Ms Qaisar). I wish hon. and right hon. Members on both sides of the House a very happy St Andrew’s Day.

It was a slight surprise to see on the Order Paper a motion in the name of the SNP that did not mention independence, but the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) managed to get it in in his perfectly scripted intervention—the first that the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) took. I understand why SNP Members have chosen this topic today. I understand why they want to keep making the case for independence—because it is brilliant for their social media clips. It allows them to stand up here, express their faux outrage, and post those clips on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and all the others. But it does not improve the lives of their constituents. Call me old-fashioned, but that is what I came here to do. I came here to represent my constituents of Burnley and Padiham and to make their lives better. My hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) made the point crystal clear when he explained what his constituents are going through right now. SNP Members had the chance to talk about those issues and they chose not to. They chose not to table an urgent question. They chose not to have a debate in the House. They chose to ignore what is happening to people up and down Scotland and the rest of the country.

SNP Members spoke about the Elections Bill. The right hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) said that we had not made the case for the changes being made in the Bill. That is not true. If anyone reads the Conservative manifesto that delivered the majority on this side of the House, they will see that we proposed changes on ID for elections.

[Aaron Bell]

I served on the Elections Bill Committee and the evidence we heard from Tower Hamlets, Peterborough and all over the country does make that case very clearly. We took on the arguments made by the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) in that Committee and defeated them.

[Antony Higginbotham]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention, which highlights perfectly my point about faux outrage: all that SNP Members come here for is to do clips for social media. They do not want to be here. I get why they do not want to be here; I understand their desire for independence. But given that they are here, they have an obligation and a responsibility to represent their constituents in the best possible way, and we could have focused this debate on a much better subject.

SNP Members have put forward a number of examples that they sought to use to highlight his conduct, but they were very selective in doing so, so let me give them some other examples. Why do we not talk about the vaccine roll-out, led by the Prime Minister, which was the quickest in the world? Why do we not talk about the fact that the Prime Minister decided he would be the first Minister for the Union? Why do we not talk about the fact that the Prime Minister launched the Union connectivity review, because he cares about linking the four corners of the UK? Why do we not talk about the UK shared prosperity fund? Why do we not talk about the fact that our armed forces are growing and that, as a result of the plans announced by the Defence Secretary, they are growing for the first time in Scotland, too? We could have focused this debate on far bigger issues that matter to people in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and it is a shame that the SNP did not.