Early Parliamentary General Election

Alan Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 19th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kinahan (South Antrim) (UUP)]

I am pleased to be able to speak in this debate, Mr Speaker. As we all know, Northern Ireland is in a brittle state at the moment. We have no Executive and no Government, and I wonder whether the Prime Minister fully considered what may happen to us. Before the recess, I was given an excellent answer as to our position in the Union, and I was very grateful for it, but I want to get three points across now.

Although the first is not about this election, because we fully support today’s motion, I must say that the public in Northern Ireland are fed up to the back teeth with elections. They have had so many and they see no point in another Assembly election. Secondly, people who watched what was going on at Easter may have seen paramilitaries—I believe this was in west Belfast and somewhere else—marching and carrying the European Union flag as if it were their banner. Brexit for us is a very different and brittle world. Ulster Unionists fully support the need to find the right way forward, but this is going to be used by Sinn Féin to try to break up the Union and we need that support. So I ask that in their manifesto the Government look not only at how they deal with Northern Ireland’s special status, but at how they ensure we have a workable Government in the future. We need change, which is what the Ulster Unionists have been all about; we need to get back to the central parties running Northern Ireland.

My last point is about making sure that that manifesto looks after our armed forces and our ex-servicemen. Legacy is playing its way out and it is not protecting the people who should be protected for doing their duty. We will support today’s motion.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

rose—

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

As several hon. Members have pointed out, the Prime Minister heads up a party with a majority gained partly by it cheating in the last general election, and it has been fined by the Electoral Commission as a result. Yet today she had the brass neck to stand there and give a speech all about leadership, so I want to know, what leadership is the Prime Minister showing on this issue? She refused to answer the questions from the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) and from my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald) about election cheating and some of her current MPs participating again in this forthcoming general election. What leadership intervention has she made within her party to make sure that this spending cheating does not happen again?

[Mrs Main]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I think it is a matter of taste rather than of order, but the hon. Lady has made her point with force and alacrity, and it is on the record. Had the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) concluded his oration?

[Alan Brown]

I have a bit more—about further non-leadership interventions by the Prime Minister. She consistently said that there would be no general election, but she has now done a massive U-turn. She could not answer why she has changed her mind on the single market. We have heard no evidence as to what this hard Tory Brexit is going to mean and what it would mean compared with Scotland staying in the single market. She has consistently ignored the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament, so I ask her to show some real leadership now.