Business of the House

Claire Hanna Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on all her work, and join her in thanks and praise for Walsall FC Foundation, Swifty the mascot, and everyone involved. The proof of focus in this area is in the statistics: the BBC recently analysed the uptake in women playing the national game, and there are now twice as many registered female football teams in England than there were just seven years ago. That is a tremendous thing to celebrate.

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

Members will know that the shared prosperity fund was initially a replacement for EU funds—and a poor imitation in the view of many. Despite Northern Ireland having the highest levels of economic inactivity and the lowest proportional SPF spend, money allocated to that fund has been repurposed into last month’s Stormont deal and effectively raided to fund vital services. Will the Leader of the House allow for a debate in Government time to discuss that fund and how money can be properly returned to levelling up and to supporting employability for carers, the long-term unemployed, vulnerable young people and people living with disabilities in Northern Ireland?

[Penny Mordaunt]

The hon. Lady raises an important point. The opportunity to speak directly to the Secretary of State at the Dispatch Box is not until 24 April, so I will ensure that he has heard her concerns.

Parliamentary Partnership Assembly

Claire Hanna Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Indeed. I also thank the head of the Interparliamentary Relations Office, Lynn Gardner, for her assistance. Following these initial exchanges, the European Parliament confirmed its intention, on 5 October, to appoint a delegation of 35 Members to the PPA, announcing the names on 18 October. This matches the envisaged size of the UK delegation, as set out in today’s motion.

As the motion sets out, it is intended that the procedures currently applying to the nomination, support and funding of delegations to other treaty-based parliamentary assemblies—the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly—will apply. If both Houses agree to the participation of the UK delegation, the next step will be for the members of the UK delegation to be confirmed formally through a written ministerial statement in the same way as for the UK delegations to those assemblies. The Government expect to make this written ministerial statement shortly.

Following discussions between both Houses and others, this delegation will consist of 21 Members of this House and 14 noble Lords, and it will respect the party balances, with Members from the party of Government having the majority on the delegation, including six noble Lords.

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

It probably does not need saying, I suppose, that the context and the needs of the people and the economy of Northern Ireland will continue to loom fairly large as this relationship evolves. There is precedent, from 2016, in the Brexit Select Committee, whose composition ensured that it accommodated a range of views from Northern Ireland. Will the right hon. Member outline how the different views—indeed, the totality of views—from Northern Ireland will be represented in this partnership?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

That is obviously an important point. The composition of the delegation has not yet been confirmed, and we will have to see what names are announced in the ministerial statement, but I would make the general point that this House is able to represent the views of the whole of the United Kingdom in any delegation it sends out. That is of course very important.

Committee on Standards

Claire Hanna Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

Well, that worked out well, didn’t it? What an absolute and utter disaster. We have seen the Leader of the House standing there, with no apology, no contrition, and no ability to let it sink in just how bad things are. The last place that he wanted to be today was at the Dispatch Box doing exactly the opposite of what he did two weeks ago and saying everything that he did not say when he presented that motion. The Government were doing everything possible yesterday to get to 10 o’clock so that this debate would not be had, only to be holed by the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) with the word “object”—best laid plans and all that. What we have is another day of this, another day of headlines, and another day of examining Tory sleaze.

What has happened in those 13 days since the Leader of the House was last at the Dispatch Box? We know that public trust in this Government is now at an all-time low. Their inboxes have been swamped by messages from furious constituents demanding to know what they are going to do about all of this. Day after day, we have been waking up to endless Tory sleaze stories in the national newspapers. Companies are now dispensing with the services of Tory MPs in these lucrative second jobs because of the stink that has been created by all of this, and the Tories have lost their lead in the opinion polls. Things could not actually be worse for them. They would face losing their seats if a general election were called tomorrow, and they have the Leader of the House to thank for their current sorry predicament.

This little plan to save their pal was hatched between the Leader of the House and the Government Chief Whip, and backed enthusiastically by the Prime Minister. The Leader of the House is supposed to be the clever one. It is he who has the Eton education and the millions in the Cayman Islands. This is all on him, and he is responsible for this mess. Let us remind ourselves of what he said 13 days ago. He was so passionate in his defence of his good friend Owen Paterson that he even invoked one of his favourite Latin phrases. “Let justice be done though the heavens fall,” he extolled in this House in an almost Atticus Finch-like defence of his good friend—his good friend unfairly maligned and maltreated by this House—who had just pocketed a cool half a million pounds and been found to have broken our rules in a consistent and egregious manner. Now the Leader of the House is here doing the exact opposite. If he had even any sense of dignity, if he had a smidgeon of self-respect, he would be long gone. People do not usually survive something like this. They do not survive a story lasting 13 days. He has defied the laws of political science and it is amazing that we find him at the Dispatch Box today.

Let us remind ourselves what we are actually doing today. We are rescinding a Committee that the Government whipped in order to achieve a kangaroo court Committee of corruption that had a Tory majority and a Tory Chair. They did not like the result of our existing Standards Committee, so not only did they set aside its finding, they actually decided to replace the Committee itself. They are so arrogant and have such a sense of entitlement that they thought they would get away with it, and they would have got away with it if it was not for those pesky constituents.

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

The public have made very clear over the last two weeks their demands for high standards. To be consistent with the new, more respectable position of the Government, does the hon. Member agree that they must revisit and resile from clauses in the Elections Bill that would allow them, through strategic policy statements, to impose their will on the Electoral Commission and to block outcomes from it that they do not like? Does he also agree that proceeding with those aspects of the Elections Bill would make it clear that they have not learnt the lesson that messing with the independent oversight of politicians—in this case, over donations and spending—is really off limits?

[Pete Wishart]

I utterly agree. I would have thought that today might just be a watershed moment for the Government—that they would look at the whole package of measures that they have proposed to decrease the legitimacy of this House and electoral processes, and that they would then do the right thing on the back of that. But knowing them the way that I do, I doubt whether that will happen.