Speaker’s Statement

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Before you reflect on this, I acknowledge that we have known each other for over 30 years—in many ways our personal political lives seem to have gone off in very different directions in the course of that time—and I acknowledge the kind remarks you made to me on another occasion outside this House last week, but I am one of the Members who have formally recorded my anxiety about your partiality in the Chair, and I think the right way to do that is to do it formally.

Having done that, like my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne), and having noted the narrow terms in which you gave your ruling today, I think those terms in your coming to your judgment are reasonable. However, would our knowing what the response is to the letter imposed on the Government by this House to request an extension be a sufficient change of circumstances for you to reconsider the conclusions you have come to today?

[Mr Speaker]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, repetition is not a novel phenomenon in the House of Commons, including when perpetrated by me. I have made the point often—forgive me, but I make it again—that I tend to subscribe to the dictum of the late Lord Whitelaw in these matters. He famously used to say, “Personally, I think it is better to cross bridges only when I come to them”. It is a hypothetical question, and I would have to reflect on it and make a judgment in the circumstances of the time.

I do not want to fall out with the hon. Gentleman, and I appreciate his courteous opening remarks. He will not be surprised to know that, although I absolutely defend his right to his opinion, I do not accept his characterisation of my speakership. I have tried to do the right thing by Parliament. Sometimes people like it when it goes their way and sometimes they do not when it does not, but that is my honest approach. If he disapproves of it, I am sorry about that, because I have known him a long time, but I will live with that. I do not mean that in any discourteous or patronising way, but I will live with that. It is one verdict, and there will be others. However, I have made the judgment I have made, and let us wait and see how events develop.