Early Parliamentary General Election (No. 2)

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. We now face 34 days during which all the checks, balances and gears of parliamentary democracy have been deliberately stalled while the Government teeter between avoiding and evading the law. This is neither normal nor honourable.

We desperately need a new politics of citizens’ conventions in every nation and of truth and conciliation in an informed referendum, with article 50 revoked, if necessary, to allow that to happen. In all honesty I know I cannot ask you to resolve this, but I think the time is fast approaching when you will have to do exactly that.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The events of tonight have clearly shown that our political system is broken. It is wrong that a Prime Minister can suspend Parliament as a mere inconvenience simply to avoid scrutiny. It is wrong that he can cynically try to use the proposal of a general election as a way of getting us to crash out of the EU while we are in the middle of a general election campaign.

We cannot continue with this uncodified constitution that depends on people playing by the rules, when we have a feral Government who are not only not playing by the rules but are not even going to abide by the law. We urgently need a written constitution and a citizens’ convention to inform it. No one voted for less democracy. We should design our constitutional settlement so that such a cynical power grab can never be allowed to happen again.

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your guidance, because I think many of our constituents will be confused tonight. They will be confused because a Labour party that has asked for a general election for two years has turned one down, because the Liberal Democrats are acting anything but democratically and because the SNP is so arrogant that it says it speaks for all of Scotland, when no one party speaks for all of Scotland.

Tonight a lot of people in this House have put our faith—[Interruption.] You talk about shouting people down, but you are happy to shout me down. I think not. You will not shout me or my constituents down.

A lot of people have put faith in my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to come back with a new deal, and there are concerns about time. In the time that you have left, Mr Speaker, can you assure the House that additional time will be made available for debate when we come back? If that means late-night sittings or weekend sittings, we shall have it. We need to debate a new rule, and hopefully you will help facilitate that.