Points of Order
Debate between George Galloway and John Bercow(10 years, 11 months ago)
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George Galloway (Bradford West) (Respect)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. While infatuated with the king’s horses and men in the first world war, the Education Secretary is less keen to talk, at least in detail, about the Kings Science Academy. On 6 January, here in the House, in answer to oral questions, in successive sentences, the Secretary of State—inadvertently, no doubt—misled the House in two important respects. First, he claimed that the police action now being taken at the academy was “a direct result” of his Department’s actions. That is the opposite of the truth. A brave whistleblower caused the police action, and if it had been left to the Secretary of State’s Department, there would have been no police action at all.
Secondly, and most important, the Secretary of State claimed on 6 January that Mr Alan Lewis—a vice-chairman of the Conservative party, no less—was generously taking a reduction in the income of £6 million that the academy was paying him for rent on the site, which he owns. That too is untrue. At the very least, neither Mr Lewis not the Education Secretary will provide a scintilla of evidence in this regard.
The Secretary of State is refusing to answer me, Mr Speaker. I do not think that he will refuse to answer you. Will you bring him here to withdraw those misleading statements?
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. Before I respond to it substantively, I should say that I hope that the hon. Gentleman, who is an experienced parliamentarian, took steps to notify the Secretary of State for Education of his intention to raise it this afternoon.
Mr Speaker
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. As for the substance of his point of order, I simply say to him that every Member of the House is responsible for the accuracy of his or her statements to it. In the event that any error has been made, it is incumbent on the person who makes the error to correct the record. I am not aware of any intention to correct it, but the hon. Gentleman’s point of order has been heard, it is on the record, and I think that, at this stage, the proper thing for me to say is that I wait to see what, if any, response to it there is. We will leave it there for today.
Points of Order
Debate between George Galloway and John Bercow
Mr Speaker
What I would say to the hon. Gentleman is twofold. If he is quoting accurately, the website is wrong and can speedily be put right. On the second point, I simply say for his benefit and that of the House that the selection of amendments has not yet taken place. He is therefore in the realm of the hypothetical. Whether he wishes to be there I cannot say, but I do not and, I trust, neither does the House.
George Galloway (Bradford West) (Respect)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. At 3 o’clock in the morning on 6 May in Shapla square in Dhaka, the capital of a Commonwealth country, Bangladesh, thousands of sleeping demonstrators were set upon by commandos. The reports are that significant numbers of people have been killed. Have you had any indication that the Foreign Secretary wishes to come to the House and make a statement about those extraordinary events?
Mr Speaker
I have received no such indication. However, when I think of the hon. Gentleman and an issue of concern to him, I almost invariably think of dogs and bones. Therefore, I imagine that this is a matter to which he will take other parliamentary opportunities to return. We look forward with interest and anticipation.
Sittings of the House (Wednesday 17 April)
Debate between George Galloway and John Bercow(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
Order. May I say, as I do not wish the hon. Gentleman to be led away from the path of virtue, that the point may be of interest to scholars but it is at best tangential to the sittings of the House motion?
George Galloway
As would have been what I was going to say about Neddy Scrymgeour, the great temperance MP who was Mr Churchill’s partner in the two-Member constituency at that time. How we could do with some temperance, some prohibition in the House today, at least as far as the hon. Member for Falkirk (Eric Joyce) is concerned.
Mr Speaker
Order. I know the hon. Gentleman is developing his argument, but I ask whether he would be good enough to withdraw the reference to an hon. Member who is not present, and to continue with his main speech.
George Galloway
I happily withdraw the remark. It was unworthy, but I have some history with the hon. Gentleman. I hope you, Mr Speaker, and the House will forgive me for that unworthy detour down Dundee way.
My point is that Mr Churchill was a deeply divisive figure. He was a man who changed sides, ratted and re-ratted; a man who was in Parliament, out of it and back again; and a man whose conduct of public affairs was very controversial and divisive. However, by the time he died, only a tiny percentage of the population were churlish enough to imagine that such a man should not be given the full 21-gun treatment and the full gun carriage treatment.
Virtually everybody in this country knows that, were it not for Mr Churchill, this Parliament would either not exist or it would speak in German. I argue that the very existence of the country was saved by Mr Churchill. That makes him worthy of a national funeral. That is what made him—whatever one’s point of view of his domestic politics—deserving of the muffling of the chimes of Big Ben, and deserving of the lowering of the cranes on the Thames.
No such consensus exists—you must know this, Mr Speaker—about the deceased in this case. Vast tracts of this land—the north, Scotland, the midlands and south Wales, and other industrial areas of this country, which were reduced to distressed areas in Mrs Thatcher’s term of office—have never forgiven her, but they are being asked to pay for this funeral. In fact, they are not being asked; they are being told that they must pay for it.
The deceased was a great proponent of private enterprise and a great enemy of public expenditure and the role of the state, which she wished to shrink. You were once a devotee of those things, Mr Speaker, but age has brought wisdom, as it has in some respects to all of us. Is that not an irony? As Ken Loach, the great film director, put it, surely we should have put the funeral out to tender to the private sector, and invited companies to sponsor it. Surely that is what Mrs Thatcher would have wanted at a time when our pensioners are shivering to death in a long winter that has stretched into the spring. At a time when we are virtually nationally bankrupt, is it right that the public should be told—not asked, but told—that they must pay for a party political funeral? I believe not.
The public have not been consulted on any of this. If my postbag has any relation to anyone else’s, it must be obvious that a lot of people are very unhappy. The public had one chance, to which I alluded a moment ago. They could download “Ding-Dong!”, the song from “The Wizard of Oz”, as they did in very large numbers, but the state broadcaster, which has led the fawning, censored the music that the public chose with their money in private economic decisions—Mrs Thatcher was a big fan of those.
Mr Speaker
Order. I was awaiting the conclusion of the hon. Gentleman’s sentence, but I struggle to see how what he has just said relates to the terms of the sittings of the House motion, to which I know it was his intention, and is now his intention, immediately to return.
George Galloway
Indeed, Sir. Of course, the backdrop cannot be separated from the motion. Many watching on the Parliament channel will know what the backdrop is—[Laughter.] Hon. Gentlemen may laugh, but that is because they are not used to being watched on the Parliament channel.
Perhaps that is just as well—[Interruption.] They cannot silence me. Some Members are not for turning, and I am one of them. Better men than they have tried to do so. [An Hon. Member: “You are hardly ever here.”] But when I am here, people listen, unlike some—[Interruption.] Well, I have had a lot of tweets about the speeches that preceded this one, and they are not at all complimentary.
The backdrop to this motion is clear, and it has been one thing after another. As Mr Macmillan said, it is not one damn thing, it is one damn thing after another. It is the state mourning that was effectively declared by the state broadcaster. It is the decision that the Government made—it is speculated that your office, Mr Speaker, was not wild about the idea—to recall Parliament at vast public expense. Members of Parliament were offered up to £3,700 to fly back from their holidays to attend what was, in effect, a state eulogy for a party political figure, and then to fly back at public expense to their holidays. I hope that IPSA will release the details of who claimed and what they claimed. That was a grotesque and totally unnecessary decision. Monday was the day on which Parliament returned, and Monday was the day on which people could have paid tribute and made the points that they wished to make. That was the second problem. The state mourning was the first, and the unnecessary and fantastically expensive recall of Parliament was the second.
The muffling of the chimes of Big Ben was the third, the banning of “Ding-Dong!” was the fourth and now we have this motion. The shadow Leader of the House, politely as is her wont, made the point that there is every belief in this House that this Prime Minister likes to avoid Prime Minister’s questions. If he avoids it tomorrow, he will have avoided it for four consecutive weeks— [Interruption.] I am at every Prime Minister’s questions— [Interruption.] I again caution hon. Gentlemen—as I must call them—on the Government Benches: people are listening to this debate, and this Thatcherite chorus, cackling like hyenas, would do better to show a touch of sensitivity to the fact that millions of people in this country hate Margaret Thatcher and those who followed her.
If the Prime Minister dodges Prime Minister’s questions tomorrow, he will have dodged them for four consecutive weeks. As Mr Wilson said, a week is a long time in politics. Four weeks is a long time to miss Prime Minister’s questions, the only mass audience—
George Galloway
Welcomed? My goodness. I do not know where it was welcomed—certainly not by the financial commentators; certainly not by the markets; certainly not by the public; certainly not by the opinion polls—but the Prime Minister has not been able to be questioned about it. The Prime Minister has not been able to be questioned about anything for four weeks, neither domestic nor international. Our country is involved in very many serious matters overseas—you will be very happy that I do not seek to dilate upon them, Mr Speaker—and the Prime Minister has not been able to be questioned about them.
I just feel, and I think that the attendance here this evening indicates, that there are many who feel, whether they are in the official Opposition or not, that this has all gone too far. An attempt at canonisation of a person around whom there is—I see that Mr Speaker is frowning. I speak as a religious man. I am not against canonisation where it is justified, but there has to be a consensus before one can be canonised, and no such canonisation is possible—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. There is an insistent noise from the Back Benches, which I think is rather unseemly. Members cannot both cavil at what is being said and make a raucous noise themselves. I simply say to the hon. Member for Bradford West that I was not frowning at him; I was listening attentively to him.
George Galloway
Thank you, sir.
The point is that beatification and canonisation is something that can happen only when there is a consensus. There is no such consensus about the former Prime Minister, yet people are acting, the state is acting. The state broadcaster and now the parliamentary authorities are asking us to accept things that are too close to royal. Mrs Thatcher famously had a slightly fraught relationship with the palace, and I can understand why. Mrs Thatcher might to many Government Members have been great, but she was not great to up to 60% of the electorate when she was alive, and, according to the polls, more than 50% of the people now being polled are against her—strongly against her and feel that she did bad things here and abroad. It brings into discredit this kind of funeral, this kind of state occasion, if it is awarded when many people in the country feel it is unjustified, and feel that it is being rammed down their throats for partisan and ideological reasons, for which they are being asked to pay.
Through you, Mr Speaker, I caution the establishment of which I suspect you are not fully regarded as a member, though you ought to be, because your office is one of the great offices in the land. I say to the establishment, through you, Mr Speaker, that it has gone too far. There has been too much of this. It is too expensive, too elaborate, too regal, and many people in the country are unhappy about it. And to compound it all by effectively cancelling a vital part of British political life would be to add insult to the injury already suffered.
My last point—[Hon. Members: “Hurray!”] Gentlemen—[Hon. Members: “And ladies!”]—and ladies, although the misbehaviour is coming exclusively from gentlemen, as I think they are called, on the Government Benches, my point is this. This funeral did not have to be organised so that it would clash with Prime Minister’s Question Time. It could have been held today or on Thursday. The state was vitally involved in the organisation of this funeral—we know that, because we are paying for it—and it was the state that organised the clash with Prime Minister’s Question Time, so why should the House of Commons be asked to accept the abrogation of its proper role tomorrow, given that the Government are responsible for the clash?
It is too late now to change the time of the funeral, but it is not too late for the House to refuse to abandon its responsibilities at Prime Minister’s questions. If the House divides on this at the end of the evening, as I hope it will, I hope that a decent number of Members of Parliament will reflect the feelings, if not of their own constituents, then of the tens of millions of constituents of many of us on the Opposition Benches—and of some Government Members too—who feel that the adoration of the Maggie has gone far enough.
George Galloway
I am grateful to the Leader of the House. He would not want to mislead the House or the public on that point. First, I was elected on 29 March, and the House of Commons has been on holiday 50% of the time since then. I am in the House of Commons every day; I just do not want to vote for Tweedledum or Tweedledee—
Mr Speaker
Order. May I ask the hon. Gentleman to resume his seat?
There are two issues here. First, it was not clear to me, but it has since been signalled to me, that the Leader of the House has concluded his speech; I thought he was giving way to the hon. Gentleman. Secondly, the hon. Gentleman should not accuse someone of misleading the House, which I thought I heard him suggest.
Mr Speaker
I am genuinely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that correction. There is no argument.
The debate has been concluded by the Leader of the House. Those who wished to speak were called to do so. I do not think anybody would say I have been other than fair in facilitating a proper debate, and I listened respectfully to all the speeches, as I always do.
Question put.
Points of Order
Debate between George Galloway and John Bercow(11 years, 10 months ago)
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George Galloway (Bradford West) (Respect)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I wonder whether you have had time to consider and reflect on the answer that you gave to the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) yesterday in relation to the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), whose nobility of character is, of course, beyond compare and legendary, as attested his bravura performance yesterday. But he cannot surely be called a noble Member of the House of Commons; it must be many centuries since any such appellation was permissible. Will you rule that, however noble the hon. Gentleman’s character, he cannot be referred to in here as the noble Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross?
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his exquisite point of order, of which I had no advance notice whatsoever. I, of course, recall the exchange yesterday and what I say to him is that it is possible to be both noble and to sit in the House of Commons. With particular reference to honorific titles, which I think is the matter he has in mind, my recollection is that the Modernisation Committee issued a report recommending the substantial reduction in the use of such titles. As a consequence, I understand the present situation to be that their use in debate is a matter not of order but of taste. I hope that that is helpful to the hon. Gentleman.