Privileges Committee Special Report

Craig Mackinlay Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I have to remind the hon. Gentleman that we are all bound by the same code of conduct, and that includes the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister found time last week to comment on cricket, but could not even find time to comment on the lies of his predecessor—I am responding to the hon. Gentleman—or to the Committee. He could have shown some leadership, but as well as not voting, he could not even bring himself to give us a view.

At the Liaison Committee last week, the Prime Minister said that he had not even read the report. It is not long, and it is about his own MPs. Has he read the report now? Does he understand why this matters so much, and if so, does the Leader of the House know if we will get to hear what he thinks of today’s motion? Does he accept the Committee’s conclusions? Will he be voting to approve the report in full? He is the Prime Minister, and this matters because it was a predecessor Prime Minister of his who has brought us to this point by lying to this House. If we want to turn the corner, if we want to move on and if those Conservative Members shaking their heads really want to turn the corner, it matters that the current Prime Minister has failed even to draw a difference between himself and his predecessor.

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

I feel the hon. Lady did not fully give an answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Lia Nici). How would the hon. Lady feel if, on a Monday, she had a letter from a court saying she had been found guilty, after a court hearing on the Friday, when she had no prior knowledge of it, no summons and no opportunity to give her evidence? Does that feel like natural justice? After all, this is nothing to do with Boris Johnson. That is so last week; this is today.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention because it gives me the opportunity to remind the entire House that this is not a court. It is a procedural Committee that was assessing evidence that was publicly available. We are talking about tweets and TV shows, none of which was hidden.

The Prime Minister also claimed that Lord Goldsmith had quit as a Minister after refusing to apologise for his actions. Lord Goldsmith said that was not true, so which is it? Did the Prime Minister ask him to apologise? More importantly for today’s debate, has he asked his own named MPs to apologise, and if not, why not? Will he do so, and has the right hon. Lady, as the Leader of the House, spoken to her colleagues about this?

I end by reiterating that the Privileges Committee is a key piece of Britain’s democratic jigsaw. We must not allow the Committee to be caught up in a Tory psychodrama; its work is far too important for that. All credit to all the MPs on that Committee for putting their allegiances to one side and being able to do the work. Labour respects the Committee. We respect the rules and processes of this House. We know that without them, our democracy fractures. I stand ready to vote for the motion today and to approve the report in full, and I urge colleagues in all parts of the House to do the same.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker—Madam Deputy Speaker, sorry. I think I got my pronouns mixed up. I rise to support the motion before us today. I am glad that there are no amendments to it, because it is the motion that the Privileges Committee asked to be put before the House in its special report. It is very important that

“this House notes with approval the Special Report”.

For us to do that will give us the best chance as a democratic House to put what has been an unprecedented period behind us. It is not usual, as we all know, for a Prime Minister to agree that a Privileges Committee report into what he said on the Floor of this House be sent to the Privileges Committee, as happened in April 2022, with the unanimous support of the House. It is not usual for a Privileges Committee report to involve such high stakes as the one that the members of the Privileges Committee—many of them are sitting here listening to this debate—had to cope with. We have never in my experience—I am not sure that it is even in the history books—had a Privileges Committee of any Parliament put in quite that position. It is therefore to the credit of this House—

[Craig Mackinlay]

Just while we are discussing semantics —I am referring to the interaction that we had on what “impugn” might mean—the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) mentioned the words, “with approval”. My interpretation of “with approval” is that every word in this motion is absolute and correct. I have to say that, having heard the evidence, on the first occasion that my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mark Jenkinson) has been able to speak as part of this evidence, he raised doubts about what has been published as supposedly coming from him. Am I getting this wrong? My interpretation of approval is that it is all absolutely correct. If that is the case, I am afraid that I have doubts on that front.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman will do what he thinks is right—I think we can all guess what that will be—when we vote. I note that the way in which this House has traditionally worked is that there are Standing Orders and there is Erskine May, but there are also unwritten assurances about how this House should behave when these issues are before it. Certainly, the Leader of the House was correct to ask, rather philosophically, at the beginning of this debate what had changed to cause the emergence of behaviour that I would not have expected to see when I first came into this House 31 years ago. I would not have expected to see people’s integrity being impugned in quite the way that it has been while they were doing duties that this House had unanimously asked them to do. But, of course, social media did not exist when I first came into this House, and neither did GB News. Before things get any more heated, we need to stop and think about the consequences of allowing the behaviour that we have seen in the past few months, as the Privileges Committee has done its report, to continue.

It is to the credit of this House that the Privileges Committee’s original report—its fifth report—was debated and carried by such a majority. That puts a line in the sand. It enables us to begin to rebuild the reputation of this House and to use the Privileges Committee to ensure that this House can police itself on the Floor in the Chamber and bring Ministers to account by insisting that they tell the truth.

The special report, again as the Leader of the House pointed out, is unprecedented, because people have never behaved this way in the past when a Privileges Committee was attempting to carry out the duty that was given to it by a motion that was passed unanimously by the House. It is important, given that similar rules apply to the Committee on Standards, that, in what I hope will be the rare occasions in the future when the Privileges Committee may have to meet to do its job and be convened, it will be allowed to do so.

As I said to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), if we cannot restore the respect that the Privileges Committee must have to do its job in future, we will have to create an outside body to do it. That would be a very profound constitutional change, with far greater implications for the freedom of people to speak in this House than simply abiding by decency, courtesy and proper rules when the Privileges Committee is meeting.

Tributes to the Speaker

Craig Mackinlay Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

Mr Speaker, this is a very special day for you. I was not going to speak, but I want to put on record a couple of my times with you.

As I mentioned to you on shaking your hand when I took up my place here in 2015, we had a tea together many years ago—perhaps when you were in a different place politically, but we will put that aside.

There is one kindness you have given me. You have earned me a few pennies while I have been in the House. I am not always the first to be called or the last, but I have earned many a good coin from my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen), because we often have a little bet as to who will be up last. I am grateful to you for adding to my wealth and detracting from the wealth of my hon. Friend.

I had a very difficult experience at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, which you took a great interest in throughout. The day after my acquittal, there were business questions. I came to speak to you at the Chair, to tell you that I had rather more to say than is appropriate at business questions. You allowed me, on that very special day for me, the opportunity to explain in far more minutes than one would usually allow for business questions what I had been through and the annoyance thereof.

There is lots that I have not agreed with you on over the last few years, but I will never forget your fairness to me and to others in the House who face difficulties. That was an opportunity to put on record in this great international public space what I had been through and the annoyance that I felt. I thank you for that occasion probably more than for any other since my time in the House, and I wish you every great success in the future, a long life and much happiness.

[Mr Speaker]

That is extremely gracious of the hon. Gentleman, and I thank him from the bottom of my heart.

Business of the House

Craig Mackinlay Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

There very much was a people’s vote. That was in June 2016, and the people decided to leave the European Union.

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

Will the Leader of the House confirm that the very act of the Prime Minister signing what is, in effect, an amendment to the Lisbon treaty under royal prerogative makes whatever we have to say on the matter of an extension rather irrelevant?

[Andrea Leadsom]

This House voted on 14 March for a short extension of article 50. At the time, the Prime Minister made it very clear that if this House were to vote for that short extension, she would seek to negotiate it but that she could not be certain what the EU would offer in return. My hon. Friend is right. The Prime Minister agreed a short extension. That was not necessarily every individual’s definition of exactly what that should be, but she agreed it on behalf of the United Kingdom. As such, in international law, the date of our exit from the EU has now changed irreversibly to 12 April, or to 22 May if we have agreed to progress with the withdrawal agreement.

Business of the House

Craig Mackinlay Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I thank the hon. Lady for the warm gratitude that she showed to those who work so hard in this House. I absolutely share that, and I particularly point to Fiona Channon, who has done so much in this place, and to Sir Roy Stone, who has done so much in the Whips Office for a very long time.

The hon. Lady asks when there will be an Opposition day debate. As she will appreciate, there is a lot of important business at the moment, but the Government will, of course, abide by our obligations to provide Opposition days. I note her point about the May recess, but I am glad that she acknowledges that we have just announced an agreed Easter recess.

The hon. Lady asks if we will rule out a no-deal Brexit. As she will appreciate, that is the legal default position. Members of the House have the opportunity next Tuesday to vote for a deal that would rule out no Brexit, and I encourage them to take that opportunity. She asks me to confirm that, as I have just announced, the meaningful vote will take place on Tuesday 15 January, and I refer her to the business of the House that I have just read out.

The hon. Lady asks about the point of order that was raised concerning visitors to constituency offices. She was on the working group on the complaints procedure, so she knows full well—I am surprised that she is asking me—what the group decided about the question of how to deal with complaints from people who come to our constituency offices, sometimes with very grave problems.

We, as Members of Parliament, always seek to help our constituents, but sometimes we cannot do so for various complex reasons, as all hon. and right hon. Members will know, and constituents sometimes take against the result. The working group, which the hon. Lady was a part of—and you, Mr Speaker; we had regular conversations about this—decided that in order for the complaints procedure to get up and running for six months, we would deal at a later point with the complexities of people with various mental health issues and grievances that might not be valid in a complaints procedure sense. We agreed in the House that the question of how, if at all, we could deal with the complaints of constituents in our constituency offices—either to our constituency staff, or to us, as Members—would be looked at in the six-month review of the complaints scheme, which kicks off on 21 January. I will, of course, be delighted to write to all hon. and right hon. Members on that point, for clarity.

On the hon. Lady’s point about the talking out of a vote the other evening on the Standards Committee report, I can absolutely reassure her that both the Member who raised the point of order and the actions of the Deputy Speaker were entirely in order. You might want to confirm that, Mr Speaker, but that is a matter for you. The advice I have taken is that both were entirely in order.

With regard to PIP, if the hon. Lady wants to write to me, I will of course take up her serious constituency matter. I point out that this Government have ensured that there has been an £8 billion increase in real terms since 2010 in the amount of money that we spend on supporting people with disabilities.

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

As many people may have noticed, I have not been in this Chamber as much as I might have liked over the last three months. As the House will know, I was acquitted just yesterday in Southwark Crown court of all charges relating to the 2015 general election. I know that business questions are generally a call for debate, but in respect of election law we fundamentally need legislative change. In this area, it is surely unacceptable that innocent people are dragged through the courts, at enormous expense to the public purse, on the back of abstract law.

My case went through a variety of court processes prior to trial. In March, the Appeal Court, in front of the Lord Chief Justice, agreed with the long-held principle that election expenses can only be so if authorised by a candidate or agent. The Supreme Court, in July last year, overturned that view to one of mere use, whether authorised or not.

The opportunity for ne’er-do-wells to get involved in election processes and cause prosecutions is surely obvious. Everyone acknowledges that there are huge grey areas between the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000—it deals with what is usually called the national spend—and the Representation of the People Act 1983, which covers local spend. Electoral Commission guidance is confused and sketchy. I would not want anybody in this House, from either side, to go through what I have been through over the last three years. Surely, it is in the interests of the House and all Members that we have clear and unambiguous law, and I hope that a campaign for clarity in this area will be supported across the House.

[Andrea Leadsom]

Can I say to my hon. Friend that I am delighted for him that he has been fully acquitted? I congratulate him on that. My heart goes out to him over the difficult time he has had in recent years in clearing his name. I think all hon. Members across the House would recognise, on a non-partisan basis, what a difficult time he has been through. It is fantastic that he has been found not guilty of any offence.

It has become apparent from broader legal proceedings that election law on spending in 2015 was fragmented and unclear, with even the courts divided on the interpretation of the law. The Government will take steps, working alongside the Electoral Commission, to ensure there is a clearer and more transparent framework in future elections. It is in everybody’s interests that we get this right, and the Government are committed to protecting and strengthening electoral integrity.