Lobbying of Government Committee

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That the following Standing Order shall have effect until 31 December 2021:

Investigation into the Lobbying of Government Committee

(1) There shall be a select committee, called the Investigation into Lobbying of Government Committee, to consider:

(a) the effectiveness of existing legislation to prevent the inappropriate lobbying of Ministers and Government;

(b) the rules governing all public officials regarding conflicts of interest;

(c) the circumstances surrounding the appointment of Lex Greensill as an adviser in Government and the process by which Greensill Capital was approved for commercial arrangements with Government departments and other public sector bodies; and

(d) the role Government played in facilitating the commercial relationship between Greensill Capital and the Gupta Family Group Alliance.

(2) It shall be an instruction to the Committee that it:

(a) considers whether there are robust transparency and accountability procedures in place and whether existing rules are being adhered to;

(b) considers whether the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments’ regulatory framework and sanctioning powers are sufficient to enforce its advice;

(c) assesses the extent of undue influence that former politicians and advisers have on the policies and programmes of government departments and non-departmental public bodies; and

(d) that it makes a first Report to the House no later than 18th October 2021.

(3) The committee shall consist of 16 members of whom 15 shall nominated by the Committee of Selection in the same manner as those Select Committees appointed in accordance with Standing Order No. 121.

(4) The Chair of the committee shall be a backbench Member of a party represented in Her Majesty’s Government and shall be elected by the House under arrangements approved by Mr Speaker.

(5) Unless the House otherwise orders, each Member nominated to the committee shall continue to be a member of it until the expiration of this Order.

(6) The committee shall have power—

(a) to send for persons, papers and records, to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House, to adjourn from place to place, and to report from time to time; and

(b) to appoint specialist advisers to supply information which is not readily available or to elucidate matters of complexity within the committee’s order of reference.

(7) The committee shall have power to appoint a sub-committee, which shall have power to send for persons, papers and records, to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House, to adjourn from place to place, and to report to the committee from time to time.

(8) The committee shall have power to report from time to time the evidence taken before the sub-committee.

Mr Speaker,

“The lunches, the hospitality, the quiet word in your ear, the ex-ministers and ex-advisers for hire, helping big business find the right way to get its way.”

That is how former Prime Minister David Cameron described the next big scandal to hit British politics, back in 2010. We might think that what David Cameron lacks in transparency he makes up for in fortune telling, except that he had inside information because the person exploiting the loopholes would be the very same David Cameron.

We had a Conservative Prime Minister giving Lex Greensill access to all areas of Government. He was brought in and given privileged access to the heart of Government with the title and the business card of a senior adviser in the Prime Minister’s office. Then—what a stroke of luck—when he was no longer Prime Minister, and just past the required period, when he no longer needed the approval of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, David Cameron joined Greensill to lobby the Conservative Government full of his friends.

Having refused to respond to any questions at all for 40 days, David Cameron chose a period of national grief, hoping that there would be less political criticism and less scrutiny. It is cynical and it is shabby, and the statement itself was toe-curling. He is not sorry for his conduct, for the texts and the drinks, but he is sorry he got caught and he is sorry that his shares are now worthless. This is not just a question of why he did not go through the correct channels; it is question of why he was doing this at all.

Let us be really clear: David Cameron was not working in the national interest; he was working in his own personal interest, with the hope of making millions of pounds for himself through the exercise of his share options. But questions cannot just be asked of David Cameron, when it is current Conservative Ministers who have paved the way for this scandal. When it comes to lobbying, it takes two to tango. For every former Minister lobbying, there is someone in power being lobbied. That is why this scandal is not just about the conduct of David Cameron during his time as Prime Minister and in the years afterwards. This is about who he lobbied in the current Government and how they responded.

Lex Greensill was awarded a CBE and was made a Crown representative by a Conservative Government, yet his company’s spectacular collapse now means that over 50,000 jobs are at risk around the world, including thousands in the UK’s steel communities, from Hartlepool to Stocksbridge, from Rotherham to Scunthorpe and to Newport. The steel industry is crucial and the Government must make it clear that our steel industry will not pay the price for the failures at Greensill and beyond.

This Government have set up an inquiry, but just about supply chain finance and Greensill. Such a review is wholly inadequate, and deliberately so. They do not want to explore what needs to change in lobbying or who currently gets access to power, or the wider issue of how to lift standards, which have fallen so far in the 10 years of Conservative Governments. They do not want public hearings. They do not want the disinfectant of sunlight, as David Cameron once urged. They just want this to go away, which is why they have chosen Nigel Boardman to chair the inquiry.

It is a fact that Nigel Boardman is a good friend—a very good friend—of the Conservative Government. Some may suspect that the son of a former Conservative Cabinet Minister might be unlikely to make waves, but let us look at his record. Mr Boardman has been paid over £20,000 per year as a non-executive director at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy—a Department with a real interest in the British Business Bank, which lent to Greensill, and the British steel industry, where so many jobs are now at risk. Mr Boardman has already whitewashed the Government’s handling of public procurement during the pandemic and I fear that he will do the same again with this inquiry.

You will remember, Mr Speaker, that I jointly chaired the inquiry into the collapse of Carillion. The fact that Mr Boardman’s law firm made £8 million advising Carillion, including £1 million on the day before the outsourcers collapsed, leaves a terrible taste in my mouth as it should in the mouths of Members on the Government Benches. To cap it all, Mr Boardman was appointed to a prestigious role at the British Museum by—oh, by David Cameron! What is being proposed by the Government is not remotely fit for purpose. It is not an inquiry. It is not independent. It is an insult to us all.



The scope of this inquiry has to be bigger than supply chain financing. It has to be about lobbying, too, and bigger than what rules were broken. If the existing lobbying rules were not breached, that is a big part of the problem, surely. Had the Conservatives backed Labour’s amendments to the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill back in 2014, there would have been much more transparency, but they did not. David Cameron and his Government voted them down, and boy are they exploiting them now! We need public service in the national interest, not people viewing the state like some get-rich-quick scheme, with taxpayers treated as collateral damage.

We now learn that the Conservatives are joined in all this by the SNP, whose Rural Economy Secretary in the Scottish Government dined with Lex Greensill in one of Glasgow’s finest restaurants with no officials, no notes, no emails, no texts and no phone records about the meeting. Here in Westminster, we have witnessed the degrading of the ministerial code.

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

We have absolutely no quibble with what the shadow Minister has been saying, but is she trying to draw an equivalence between what David Cameron did and what Fergus Ewing did in a meeting that was recorded and has been publicly available for a long time on the Scottish Government’s website? There was nothing untoward in what Fergus Ewing did, and in trying to conflate the two, the hon. Lady does a great disservice to herself and her argument.

[Rachel Reeves]

Well, the Scottish people can be the judge of that. If the hon. Member thinks that a Scottish Minister dining with Lex Greensill is okay, his party should put that on its leaflets in the elections in May.

Sir Alex Allan resigned as independent adviser on ministerial interests following the Prime Minister’s failure to take action on the Home Secretary’s bullying behaviour. That was five months ago. The Government have not replaced him. They have not even advertised the job. What does that say about how seriously this Government take standards?

--- Later in debate ---

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

Mr Speaker,

“I believe that secret corporate lobbying…goes to the heart of why people are so fed up with politics. It arouses people’s worst fears and suspicions about how our political system works, with money buying power, power fishing for money and a cosy club at the top making decisions in their own interest. It’s an issue that...has tainted our politics for too long, an issue that exposes the far-too-cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money.”

Wise words indeed, and I wish they were mine, but they are not. They were said by David Cameron in February 2010, just a few short months before he became Prime Minister. He became Prime Minister with a promise that:

“If we win the election, we will take a lead on this issue by making sure that ex-ministers are not allowed to use their contacts and knowledge—gained while being paid by the public to serve the public—for their own private gain.”

Today, David Cameron, that self-styled great reformer, is up to his neck in the same cronyism, corruption and sleaze that he promised to call out, expose and eradicate while in opposition.

The hypocrisy is breathtaking, and not simply because nothing has changed. We now know that far from taking on the corrosive culture of the nod and a wink and the old boys’ club favouritism, he actually took it into government. We now know that while David Cameron was Prime Minister, Lex Greensill himself became so embedded in Downing Street that by 2012, he even had an official No. 10 business card, describing himself as a “Senior Advisor”.

Almost 10 years to the day after delivering those stirring words and making those great promises, we discover that David Cameron directly lobbied the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and senior Government officials, thereby securing 10 meetings in three months in an attempt to influence the UK Government’s covid corporate financing facility. He did it to benefit Greensill Capital, where he was then working as an adviser and lobbyist for the same Lex Greensill and where he reportedly held share options worth millions of pounds.

I invite Members to compare and contrast that level of access to the Chancellor and the powers that be at the centre of Government with that given to the millions of people and businesses left without any UK Government support during the pandemic, and in particular the group of the excluded—those 3 million self-employed people who have been left without a penny of Government support. What they would have given for just one of the opportunities that were afforded Mr Cameron, let alone the 10 that he got.

I wonder whether Mr Cameron recalled at any point while brokering those meetings his own hollow words of February 2010. He said:

“We all know how it works. The lunches, the hospitality, the quiet word in your ear, the ex-ministers and ex-advisers for hire, helping big business find the right way to get its way.”

Of course, now it transpires that the Greensill influence in Downing Street during the Cameron years went even further and deeper than we could ever have imagined, with the astonishing revelation that in 2015, one of Britain’s most senior civil servants was given permission to work part-time as an adviser to the board of Greensill while still serving as the UK Government’s head of procurement.

How is it possible that the Cabinet Office gave the green light for the former Government chief commercial officer at the Cabinet Office to become part of Greensill Capital in September 2015 while still working as a supposedly impartial civil servant? Who authorised such a move? Who approved this appointment? Who thought that that was okay? What questions did the people at the Cabinet Office operating the internal conflict of interest policy actually ask to reach the conclusion that it was perfectly all right for one of the UK’s most senior civil servants to twin-track and work for a private finance company whose owner at that point was swanning about Downing Street, dishing out business cards describing himself as a special adviser to the Prime Minister? It beggars belief.

This is crony capitalism at its worst. It stinks. The closer we get to it, the more it reeks, and that is why we will be supporting a full independent and transparent investigation and why we will support this motion when the House divides this afternoon.

On its own, the Greensill scandal would be bad enough. Unfortunately it is far from being an isolated event. It is just the most recent example of the rampant cronyism that is at the heart and centre of this Government, who seem to be stumbling from one scandal to another as the details emerge of a network of those who have become fabulously wealthy during this pandemic not because of their skill or business acumen but because of their political connections. In November last year, the National Audit Office revealed that companies with political connections who wanted to supply the UK with personal protective equipment were directed to a high priority channel, where their bids were 10 times more likely to be successful that those from companies that did not have links to politicians and senior Government officials.

In and of itself, the existence of this high priority channel is quite remarkable, but it becomes far more sinister when we consider that the NAO also reported that there were no written rules for how this high priority channel should operate, meaning that the companies gaining political support had access to hundreds of millions of pounds of public funds, were not subject to the usual procurement rules and could bypass the essential paperwork that in normal times would be a prerequisite for safeguarding against the misuse of public funds.

No matter how we look at this, it is not a good look. I absolutely agree with Professor Liz David-Barrett of the University of Sussex when she said:

“It’s not clear to me why MPs or peers should have any special expertise on whether a company is qualified to provide PPE.”

She is absolutely right. She went on to make the entirely reasonable point that those who can be described as being linked to politically exposed persons are usually treated as being higher risk and therefore deserving of more scrutiny rather than less.

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

I asked a parliamentary question about the standards being applied to people and companies on this supposed fast-track list versus others, to check that the same due diligence standards were being applied to both sides and that there was a level playing field. The answer that I got was that they were and that in this respect the playing field was level, so would the hon. Gentleman care to reconsider his point that the same processes do not apply?

[Brendan O’Hara]

What I would love to happen is for the Committee, when it meets, to examine that in detail to find out exactly whether it is true. What is inescapable is that a company is 10 times more likely to receive a Government contract through a political contact. That deserves careful scrutiny and has to be smoked out to the nth degree.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

However we collectively as the body politic got into this situation, may I suggest that it is damaging public trust in elected representatives? The one good thing about this Committee, if it were seen to be put in place, would be that it could restore some of that trust and repair some of the damage to democracy in the UK.

[Brendan O’Hara]

The hon. Gentleman is right. I think we all know from our postbags that, regardless of which side of the House we are on in this debate, we are all tainted by this. Anything that can shine a light on this —admittedly where some might not want it to be shone—would be a very good thing, and I wholeheartedly support it.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Is there not another point here, which is that whatever inquiry needs to be done must have the proper powers? For instance, it needs to be able to guarantee that anybody who gives evidence can do so without fear of prosecution, so that if there is a whistle that needs to be blown, it can be blown. It also needs to have subpoena powers, so that people who do not want to give evidence could be forced to do so. So far as I can see, those powers could be provided only by a judge-led inquiry—maybe we should go down that route, but I think it is unnecessary—or by a parliamentary inquiry.

[Brendan O’Hara]

The short answer is yes, and that is something that I will come on to in a moment. That is why this is so important.

It is not just Members of this House who are questioning the corrosive culture of cronyism at the heart of this Government; it has been attracting some fairly high-profile international attention too. At the end of last year, The New York Times decided to investigate how the UK Government managed what it described as the greatest spending spree in the post-war era. It concluded that of the 1,200 central Government contracts worth nearly $22 billion,

“$11 billion went to companies either run by friends and associates of politicians in the Conservative Party, or with no prior experience or a history of controversy.”

That is an incredible amount of money, and any hint that it has been spent at the behest of someone with close ties to Downing Street or for the benefit of companies that have political allies in Government is deeply worrying. It has to be examined—and examined fully, robustly and independently.

While people might understand and accept that things had to happen quickly in the circumstances, and perhaps that normal procurement rules were not sufficiently speedy, they will not accept that a Government have any right to rip up every rule, every standard, every safeguard and to start throwing about public money like a scramble at a wedding, particularly when it is their mates who are there waiting to pick it up.

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

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Committee should perhaps look at other activities that this Government get up to? There are things such as the Brexit contracts—I recall that they gave a contract to a ferry company that had no ferries—and all the appointments to external bodies and regulators, which are further examples of cronyism. We need to look at this in the bigger mix as well.

[Brendan O'Hara]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I am sure that will not have escaped those on the Treasury Bench.

The Government’s inquiry, led by Nigel Boardman, simply will not work. It cannot be seen to be independent, as we have heard, because of the baggage and the back story that he has. Mr Boardman may have carte blanche to ask whatever questions he likes to whomever he likes, but they will have carte blanche not to answer those questions. If that is the case, what is the point? I have no doubt that this scandal will rumble on, and when it does, we must have a mechanism that is robust enough to see it.

Back in 2010, in his now risible speech, Mr Cameron said:

“We can’t go on like this…it’s time we shone the light…on lobbying in our country and forced our politics to come clean about who is buying power and influence.”

I wish he had meant it back in 2010. We have to mean it now, and that is why we will be supporting this motion.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

We have many speakers to get in in what is a fairly short debate, so I will impose a four-minute limit to start with—that will be on the clocks in the Chamber and on the screens of those participating virtually—but it will probably have to go down to three minutes fairly quickly.

I call the Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, William Wragg.

Oral Answers to Questions

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I think Bolton is still a town!

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP) [V]]

Since December, Argyll and Bute’s shellfish exporters have been, in their words, haemorrhaging money. Last week, one small company even paid €1,400 to taxi prawns from Boulogne to Brittany to prevent losing a high-value customer permanently. This cannot be dismissed as teething problems—the industry is being destroyed. When will we see a long-term plan to help all seafood exporters withstand the impossible trading conditions they find themselves in?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising this issue. His Scottish nationalist party colleague, Fiona Hyslop, who is the Minister in the Scottish Government, is working with the UK Government to ensure that we do everything we can to support the seafood sector across Scotland and, indeed, across the United Kingdom. But I cannot help but observe that if the Scottish nationalist party had its way, we would be back in the common fisheries policy and we would not be able to take control of our waters in the way that we want to.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 14th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

What a self-made mess this Government find themselves in, and it was beautifully articulated by the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin). For three long years this Government struggled to get their withdrawal agreement through this place. So much time was spent on it that I doubt that there was a dot or comma of that agreement that was not known to the Government. In January, they signed a legally binding international treaty. The Prime Minister signed it and described it then as a “negotiating triumph”. Not only was it a negotiating triumph, but, as he told the electorate in December, it was “oven-ready” and good to go. He told the electorate, “Vote for me and I will get Brexit done”, and for reasons that I will never fathom, the people of England did. So in December, flushed with a huge majority, he led every single Tory MP through the Lobby to support his deal. However, the Government now want unilaterally to move the goalposts and renege on what they signed up to at the start of the year. In so doing, they are wilfully prepared to break international law, take the UK’s already diminished reputation further into the gutter and take a wrecking ball to the devolution settlement. Even for this Government that is quite an achievement.

Are Ministers asking us to believe that, despite three years of intense negotiation, they did not actually understand what they were voting for, and that they did not understand what their confidence and supply partners from the Democratic Unionist party were saying about differential arrangements between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK? Are we to believe that they were unable to grasp the implications of their own Northern Ireland protocol—the one they designed with the EU to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland? It is not credible because it is not true.

[Alan Brown]

My hon. Friend makes a fine point: it is not credible and there has been bluff after bluff. Is it not the case that when the warnings were pointed out, Ministers stood at that Dispatch Box and said, “Don’t worry, we have a magic solution There won’t be any cameras or infrastructure at the border; technology will solve it all.”? We have technology that can control the movement of people and goods and deal with different customs arrangements”? Yet another bluff from an incompetent Government.

[Brendan O’Hara]

My hon. Friend hits the nail squarely on the head. That is absolutely true. They knew exactly what they were signing up to and exactly what they were voting on—a fact acknowledged by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster himself, who said in April that the deal ensures that we can leave the EU, and it is “entirely consistent” with the Belfast agreement and all our other domestic and international obligations.

So, how did we get from the agreement being a negotiating triumph in January, and being entirely consistent with domestic and international obligations in April, to today, with a Government boasting that they will knowingly breach international law if they do not get their own way? I believe that, in short, it is because those at the heart of this Government have decided, in true Trumpian fashion, that the UK will no longer play by the rules. They have cynically done their sums and reckon they have the numbers to push this legislation through. It is the behaviour of a Government who have lost their moral compass—a Government who have been reduced to using the Good Friday agreement as a bargaining chip.

It is little wonder that the United Kingdom is fast becoming regarded as a bad-faith actor among the international community, where adherence to international law and the obligations that come with it are what sets us apart from rogue states and dictatorships. The irony of all this is that it emerged against the backdrop of the faux outrage about the last night of the proms and whether it was appropriate to play “Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!”; we know it is a case of Britannia waives the rules. It is not just now; it was ever thus. Ask the Irish and the people of India. Go to large swaths of Africa. Go anywhere that is still recovering from the wreckage of British colonialism and the people there will give chapter and verse about Britannia bending, breaking, inventing and waiving the rules all day long to suit its own ends. The world had hoped and probably half expected that those days were gone; sadly, they clearly are not.

For Scotland, it does not have to be this way: we have an escape route available to us—an escape route with independence that will take us back to the family of nations of the European Union, as a law-abiding European country on an equal footing with every other independent country. It is little wonder that opinion poll after opinion poll has shown a majority for independence. I confidently predict that tonight’s shenanigans will bring that independence closer and Scotland will become an equal member of the European Union, because that is the fast-approaching settled will of the Scottish people.

Lobby and Media Briefings: Journalists' Access

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

This is an important point. As we have already discussed, there are ways to do that, and this Government are committed to them. We have mentioned some points of policy, and we have looked at the business rates point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison). To that, I add the way that this Government are making sure that they are available on social media, which, by its very nature, does not require to be inside any Westminster bubble. That is a way for people rightly to be able to hold this Government to account. It is that kind of principle that we hold very highly, and what I have been able to outline today are all the ways in which we are doing that.

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

Clearly, the Minister cannot defend what has happened and therefore she is providing a master class in whataboutery. Yesterday, Downing Street announced that there was a new show in town and that it was doing it simply because it can. It was deliberately sinister and knowingly provocative. I am sure that those involved are celebrating the fact that they have an urgent question out of it. What happened yesterday was out of President Trump’s playbook for bullies, and I am sure that those involved are feeling pretty smug about it. Did the Minister and her colleagues know that this was the type of Government they were voting for when they so enthusiastically backed Boris?

[Chloe Smith]

The type of Government we are talking about is the type that has just won a resounding majority at a general election and has the support of the people. I think that is a pretty good answer to his question.

Oral Answers to Questions

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, indeed I will. I pay tribute, by the way, to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb)—where is he?—who campaigned for so long for synthetic phonics, which has done such a huge amount to help kids to read in this country. This is the only country in the G7 where the reading performance of disadvantaged pupils has actually improved since 2009. We need to do more, and as my hon. Friend says, that is why we are investing more now—record sums—in education.

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

Q6. Margaret Thatcher— Hurrah! Order. Thank you, Mr Speaker. Margaret Thatcher, John Major and the right hon. Gentleman’s immediate predecessor all accepted that the Union of the United Kingdom can only be maintained by consent. Yet despite winning three elections seeking to test that consent, the Prime Minister insists that the SNP Government do not have a mandate to hold another independence referendum, so could he tell me exactly what mechanism is available to the Scottish people to give their consent or otherwise for maintaining this Union, and how they should go about exercising that?

[The Prime Minister]

I can only repeat my point, which is that the Scottish people do have a mechanism. They used it in 2014: it is a referendum. It took place, and as I think SNP Members all confirmed, it was a once-in-a-generation event.

Oral Answers to Questions

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

Q3. In a dispute, diametrically opposed outcomes cannot be equally beneficial for both sides. If the Prime Minister’s great deal is so good for Northern Ireland’s seafood producers because it allows them access to the single market and customs union, how would he describe his deal for the shellfish producers of my Argyll and Bute constituency, who fish in the same waters for exactly the same catch but will not have access to the single market and customs union? One has a great deal; what does the other one have?

[The Prime Minister]

The fishing communities of Scotland will have a fantastic opportunity, by the end of next year, to take back control of their entire coastal waters—all 200 miles of them—and to manage their fisheries in the interests of Scotland and thereby drive an even better deal for even better access to European markets. That opportunity would be wantonly thrown away by the abject, servile policy of the SNP, which would hand back control of Scottish fishing to Brussels.

Brexit Negotiations

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Thursday 3rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend is entirely right. He has campaigned passionately on this subject and his own voice is important in this matter. I know how influential he can be in reaching out across the House and hope very much to work with him to do that.

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

How will the Prime Minister sell this potentially ruinous proposal to the farmers and shellfish producers in my strongly remain Argyll and Bute constituency who will be able to see, just 12 miles across the water, their Northern Ireland counterparts being allowed free and unfettered access to the single market? If it is good enough for Northern Ireland, why is it not good enough for Scotland? Are my constituents simply expendable?

Early Parliamentary General Election (No. 2)

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that.

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Could you advise me how I register my anger and deep frustration at the outrageous and profoundly undemocratic suspension of this Parliament this evening? With barely seven weeks before the UK is due to leave the European Union, my constituents are deeply worried, understandably so, that, as the right hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd) said at the weekend, this Government have no interest in securing a deal and are hellbent on pursuing a catastrophic policy of no deal. Along with every other part of Scotland, my constituency voted overwhelmingly to remain. We are facing profound and devastating effects on our tourism, farming and fishing industries, and surely the least that my constituents could expect is that their view Member of Parliament is able to represent them in this Chamber at this most critical moment.

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman began his attempted point of order by inquiring how he could register his anger, and he has of course now done so. It is on the record and it will be reproduced in the Official Report. Something tells me that his observations in the Official Report will shortly be winging their way towards the local media in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency.

G20 and Leadership of EU Institutions

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

And the prize for patience and perseverance goes to Brendan O’Hara.

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. In terms of value, the United States is the world’s largest export market for Scotch whisky, worth more than £1 billion last year. Yesterday, we heard that Scotch is on a list of products that could face large import tariffs into America, which would be deeply damaging, particularly for whisky-producing communities such as those in my Argyll and Bute constituency. What discussions did the Prime Minister have with President Trump over the damaging America First, isolationist trade agenda and the effect it will have on markets around the world? Does she agree that in terms of trade, as in so much else, he is not a trustworthy ally?

[The Prime Minister]

We have been consistently clear with the United States about our concerns regarding the approach it is taking in relation to trade. As I said earlier, we continue to support the concept of a rules-based international order, working through the WTO. As I said in my statement, we want to see reform of the WTO rather than people resorting to the introduction of tariffs. We consistently champion the Scotch whisky industry around the world. I am pleased to say that there have been successes, not least by one or two of our trade envoys, in working with the Scotch whisky industry to ensure that tariffs have been reduced in other parts of the world; I can think of at least one example. We continue to try to ensure that we are opening up markets for Scotch whisky, which is an extremely good product and which we want everybody around the world to be able to enjoy.

European Council

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Lady will be aware that we have made some extra funding commitments for places across the country. We have also indicated our recognition that funds have been available from the European Union for different parts of the country, and our shared prosperity fund will be available to different parts of the country to deal with their needs and the various issues that they face.

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

Following on from the question asked by the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff), in the past week the Prime Minister has shown that there is not a word too harsh that she will not say it, that there is not a dog whistle too shrill that she will not blow it and that she is prepared to take the UK to the brink of catastrophe to get her own way. When she reflects on the past seven days, does she do so with a sense of pride or with a deep sense of regret and shame?

[The Prime Minister]

What I want to ensure—what I am working for and what I hope that we will be able to achieve in this House—is that we deliver Brexit, and that we do so in a way that enables us to protect our Union, jobs and livelihoods, and our security. That should be the aim of everybody across the House, and I hope that everybody will be able to come together to deliver that.