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

Alexander Stafford Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds]

Just for the record, as the hon. Member stated in his own letter, those issues have been taken up and dealt with. [Interruption.] He said that in his own letter. Perhaps he needs to go back and reread it.

We surely cannot stand idly by and allow this situation of cronyism to continue. The current regime of standards and rules on the conduct of Ministers relies too much on convention, in these unconventional times. It gives the Prime Minister the power to act as judge and jury even when his own conduct is in question. That is why my party, the Labour party, has come forward with a five-point plan to clean up our politics, to strengthen and uphold standards in public life, and to protect taxpayers’ money from the egregious waste and mismanagement that we have seen during the pandemic.

We would start by banning second jobs for MPs, with only very limited exemptions, to make them focus on the day job, not the one on the side. We would stop the revolving door between Government and the companies that Ministers are supposed to regulate, banning ministers from taking lobbying, advisory or portfolio-related jobs for at least five years after they had left office. We would stop Conservative plans to allow foreign money to flow into British politics, and we would create strict rules to stop donations from shell companies. We would end the waste and mismanagement of taxpayers’ money with a new office for value for money along with reform of procurement. Finally, we would establish a new, genuinely independent integrity and ethics commission to sit across Government, with the power to investigate Ministers, take decisions on sanctions for misconduct, and ban former Ministers from taking any job linked to their former roles for at least five years after leaving office.

[Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)]

I am very confused by what the hon. Lady has said, because I am under the impression that three current Front-Bench Labour parliamentarians in the House of Lords work for lobbying companies. How can you say what you have said at the Dispatch Box—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman must not refer to the hon. Lady using the word “you”, because that is me.

[Alexander Stafford]

I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker. How can we talk about these issues when current members of the Labour Front Bench work for lobbying companies? It is hypocrisy of the highest order.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I regret the fact that the hon. Member is confused. There appears to be a fair amount of confusion this afternoon. Labour has set out those measures for MPs, and we have made it very clear that we would not stand back, as his party appears to be doing. We would take that action because we are determined to clean up politics for the future. Indeed, those measures are urgent and necessary because the current system relies on having a Prime Minister who respects the rules and understands that there must be consequences for breaking them.

Labour set out those radical proposals for reform because it is so urgently needed. When it comes to cleaning up crony contracts, we are insisting on transparency because we have to learn from the mistakes made by the Conservatives, not least during this crisis, and I am afraid that we also have to learn from mistakes made by any party, including the SNP. I regret that the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, for whom I have a huge amount of respect, was not more reflective on the actions of his own party today. The SNP Government had already been criticised for treating journalists and politicians differently in their responses to freedom of information requests when the SNP’s Health Secretary tried to have freedom of information requests suspended. Disturbingly, it has been revealed that an SNP Cabinet Minister then directly intervened to try to prevent the publication of statistics on care home deaths before the Holyrood elections. The Financial Times newspaper has had to battle to force the SNP Government to reveal the total cost of their guarantee to Sanjeev Gupta’s businesses, which appears to be to the tune of more than half a billion pounds. Labour believes that sunlight is the best disinfectant, in Whitehall and in Holyrood.

Rules are there for a reason: to regulate our Parliament and its elected representatives; to uphold standards in public life; and to protect our institutions from the cancer of cronyism and corruption. As the Prime Minister has discovered in recent weeks, ripping up these rules is thankfully easier said than done. But while he fails to take action to strengthen the system, working families in our country continue to pay the price. In response to what the Minister tried to set out before, I say to him that they have been paying the price. They have been paying the price with the longest squeeze on living standards in this country since Napoleonic times, with rising fuel prices and no plan to tackle them, with life expectancy falling in many parts of our country and with 5.5 million people on NHS waiting lists. They are also paying the price with rail in the north being scaled back, and they will pay even more of the price with the Conservatives’ working-class dementia tax. The Minister tried to claim that his Government were delivering what the people of this country wanted, but they do not want the Conservatives picking their pockets, they do not want their incompetence on public services and they do not want their sleaze, graft or corruption either.

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[Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)]

I rise today on behalf of the people of Rother Valley to put on the record our strong and unwavering support for the Prime Minister and the transformative work he is doing for our communities and areas like ours across the north and the midlands. There is no doubt that this Prime Minister gets things done. I have been very disappointed by the tone of the debate. SNP Members, in typical SNP fashion, snipe from the sidelines—they are literally doing it now—and make wholly unsubstantiated claims for purely political gain. This Prime Minister, however, focuses on the job at hand of levelling up for everyone. It is clear that he is radically improving public life. To prove that, my constituents would point to a panoply of evidence.

First, and very importantly for those on the Conservative Benches and the people of the country, this is the Prime Minister who got Brexit done where others failed. He achieved Brexit when we were told that we could not leave and there was no deal that we could make. Despite that, he overcame the gridlock and delivered on what the people wanted, Brexit, which was no easy feat. He secured a deal that everyone else said was impossible and negotiated an unprecedented free trade agreement with the European Union, which no other country in the world enjoys. Crucially, he achieved a full and complete Brexit: not some Brexit in name only which was advocated by many of the liberal elite, but a full and proper Brexit.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alexander Stafford]

On Brexit, of course. I love Brexit.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

Given that Northern Ireland now has access to the single market as part of the island of Ireland and voted to remain within the European Union, why has Scotland not been offered the same opportunity?

[Alexander Stafford]

I am a bit unsure about the hon. Gentleman’s point, because the United Kingdom as a whole voted for Brexit, including a large number of people in Scotland, lest we forget—an awful lot of people. I think we should all obey the will of the people. As we have already established, when we talk about standards, SNP Members do not like listening to the will of the people, whether on Brexit or independence. They are having their cake and eating it.

Another aspect that my constituents—even SNP constituents—care passionately about is the roll-out of the fastest vaccine programme in the world under this Prime Minister. By taking the brave choices and backing myriad horses, almost nine in 10 people aged 12 and over have now received a first dose of the vaccine. Undoubtedly, the Prime Minister’s actions have led to the saving of thousands upon thousands of lives.

The Prime Minister has placed great emphasis on inventing and manufacturing vaccines here in Britain. We must recognise the Prime Minister’s foresight in placing bets on multiple vaccine options, in over-ordering doses, in ensuring the provision of boosters and in backing our British scientists and companies. Not only that, but we have provided vaccines to the rest of the world, leading the way at the G20 on vaccine donation, committing 100 million doses, including the entire Janssen UK supply and half of the UK Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines for countries in need.

Turning to Rother Valley, this Prime Minister has the backing of Rother Valley and is delivering for it. There is his support for the green industries of the future, with visible Government support for ITM Power and Government measures to protect Sheffield and Rotherham steel.

We have heard about the levelling-up fund, from which Rother Valley was pleased to get £11 million. Contrary to what SNP Members claim about the funding going to well-off areas, £4.5 million of that went to a town that they may only have heard of called Maltby. It is one of the most deprived parts of the country—in fact, it is in the lowest 5% for poverty in the entire country. I therefore believe that people there should get that funding. It is right.

The Prime Minister has listened to the people of Rother Valley and scrapped the HS2 2b arm, which is great. The area has received much coronavirus support throughout, including from bounce back loans and the like. On top of that, the Government are delivering the biggest increase in police numbers in 10 years. Government funding and the police precept will mean that, by 2022, police numbers in South Yorkshire will rise by 228—[Interruption.] Despite what SNP Members may be chuntering—there are not many of them, admittedly—by 2023, there will be more police than there were in 2010, so we are overdelivering.

Let us look at the evidence for why the people back the Prime Minister. I point to the local election results in Rotherham this year: the last time we had election results, we got a grand total of zero Conservative councillors, but this time in May, we had 20. That is the biggest increase of any council in the country and the most Conservative councillors that have ever represented Rotherham. In Rotherham, that bastion of socialism since time immemorial, Labour came within 94 votes of losing their majority. If that is not a backing for this Prime Minister, his way of doing things and getting things done, and his action, I do not know what is. Surely the test of all politicians is election results and, in May this year, the electorate gave its resounding support to the Prime Minister.

I believe that this House offers its full backing to the Prime Minister, and that Rother Valley and those areas that need levelling up support him to get things done.

[Several hon. Members rose—]