Speaker’s Statement

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

The House would decide on the principle of the withdrawal agreement Bill at Second Reading, if we got to that point. The point that the hon. Gentleman makes and the—if he will forgive my saying so—partly rhetorical question accompanying it about post Prorogation and a new Session seem to me to be self-evidently valid. I am not advocating that, but that point is self-evidently valid and I thank the hon. Gentleman for what he said.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Will you confirm to the House that the point of the rule in “Erskine May” was to stop the bullying of the legislature by the Executive? We should exclude the fact that MPs may be either strong-armed, bullied or bribed with issues such as the sacking of the civil servant who is currently in charge of the Brexit negotiations—who, by the way, was overheard in a Brussels bar predicting that what we have seen with meaningful vote 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ad infinitum, would be the Government's way of getting this botched deal through the House. The “Erskine May” rules are there precisely to avoid the kind of spectacle we have been witnessing in the past few months. Will you take all the Government’s other behaviours—ignoring votes of Parliament, making a distinction between votes that somehow are binding and others that are not binding, refusing to grant Opposition days, and beginning not to vote on Opposition days and to ignore the motions that the House passes, thereby devaluing Parliament’s opinion—into account as you judge meaningful vote 3 and any motion that the Government bring forward?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her point of order. I will reflect carefully on what she said to me. She is an extremely experienced and seasoned parliamentarian and, of course, a former shadow Leader of the House, so I will factor into my thinking the considerations that she has adduced. I do not think there is one single rationale for the emergence and continuation of the convention. I touched on some of the thinking behind it in my statement. It would be true to say that a concern with the judicious use of parliamentary time, when that time is finite, and the avoidance of its wastage is an important factor. Another important factor is ensuring clarity and consistency so far as the statute book is concerned. Associated with and underlying all that is a concept of respect for the importance of decisions made by the House and the weight to be attached to them. I will reflect carefully on these matters.

I say gently to the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg)—because I failed to respond to this point, which was very good and wittily delivered—that so far as tradition is concerned, he has a perfectly fair point. A tradition does matter and is important. What I would say to him is that just because it is not desirable to follow precedent in every case, irrespective of circumstance, that does not mean it is justified not to follow it. It depends on the particular circumstance. For example, it depends whether one is facilitating the House and allowing the expression of an opinion that might otherwise be denied, as was the case on 9 January.

In this case, of course, where we are talking about the same-question rule, I have already explained that this matter has been treated of by the House, so the question of whether a subsequent motion is the same, or substantially the same, is a live matter for consideration and judgment at the appropriate time. In fact, that seems to me to be so obviously commonsensical an observation that only an extraordinarily sophisticated person, perhaps bereft of such common sense, could fail to grasp it. The hon. Gentleman most certainly would not fall into that category, because he is both extraordinarily sophisticated and blessed, I feel sure, with a very large supply of common sense.