Business of the House

David Linden Excerpts

Thursday 15th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Yes. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this issue, which has been raised with me before. I passed on the comments to the Royal Mail and had a full response from the Royal Mail sent to the Member who raised the issue previously.

It is worth pointing out that the Government are not involved in the day-to-day operations of the company and do not play a role in handling or resolving complaints regarding Royal Mail. However, the Royal Mail has contingency plans to mitigate disruption to postal services, which are overseen by Ofcom. Ofcom has recognised that the covid-19 pandemic is an emergency under its regulatory framework. It continues to monitor Royal Mail’s performance carefully. I will pass on my hon. Friend’s comments, in the hope that I receive as good a reply on his behalf as I received last time.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

May we have a statement from the Leader of the House on the issue of inconsistency and its impact on the part of the Conservative party? In December 2019, his party had entered the general election campaign with a clear message of “Get Brexit Done”, and it won the election and was able to move forward with Brexit. If people go out and rightly cast both votes for the SNP on 6 May, why will his colleagues not accept that those people should get the independence referendum that the SNP is promising?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman knows that there was a referendum in 2014, which had a clear result. The leading lights of the separatist movement in Scotland—that is to say, Ms Sturgeon and Mr Salmond—both said that it was a generational issue. A generation has far from passed, and we are in the midst of a pandemic. We have a serious issue that we need to recover from.

The authority over a referendum is of course a reserved authority, and it is right that devolution should be allowed to work and to flourish. The results of elections to the Scottish Parliament are of fundamental importance, of course, but what the hon. Gentleman is saying is essentially a distraction from the business of dealing with the pandemic. It is irresponsible of the SNP to be saying it, rather than concentrating on getting over the pandemic and its consequences, from which this country is suffering.