Speaker’s Statement

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his comments. I hope he will understand if I say that it is not possible in these matters to please everyone. I am trying to do the right thing by listening to, taking account of and offering a response to points of order, but I am conscious, as the House will be, that we have important business to which to proceed, and I intend that we shall do so. I politely suggest that if people have already made points of order, they should not treat them as an ongoing debate. If somebody raises a point of order, and I respond to it, it is reasonable to proceed to the next person and then to a conclusion of those points of order.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Trust in politics is very important. The vast majority of us have now seen the video. Members on both sides of the House have commented that they thought the words used were “stupid woman”. Members of the public have commented on Twitter and elsewhere that they thought the words were “stupid woman”. If I understand you correctly, Mr Speaker, your own interpretation of the video was that the words used were “stupid woman”, and that your lipspeaker and the lipreader of my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) have said the same.

I take the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) at his word, because I am sure that—as my right hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Sir Patrick McLoughlin) said—he would not lie in the Chamber. However, I am very concerned about the possibility that incongruity between the different statements will affect trust in politics, and I want to know how you could use your good offices, Mr Speaker, to ensure that it is not affected adversely by the incongruity between what has been said by the right hon. Gentleman and the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

[Mr Speaker]

The answer is, by behaving well on a regular basis and by attending to our responsibilities in the House. That, encapsulated in a sentence, is my response to the hon. Lady’s point of order, and I think it is fair and reasonable.