Procedure of the House

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

We talk a lot these days, in this House and elsewhere, about transparency. There is a more old-fashioned meaning of the word transparency, which was often used when I was growing up. It was that one could see the ulterior motives of the people who put things forward. In this occasion we can see some of the old-fashioned meaning of transparency on the Floor of the House today: a device so thin to have found an hour or so from amendments to the Modern Slavery Bill that did not come; a little bit of loose change behind the sofa. I agree with everything that has been said. My admiration for the Leader of the House is not dimmed in any way, but the way he has behaved, or allowed himself to be presented as he has today, is shameful. Fortunately, he is not writing another book on Churchill—that has been left to somebody else—but as a historian he should remember what was said in the 1940 Chamberlain debate when Winston Churchill stood up to defend his colleagues’ failures. The right hon. Gentleman should not allow himself to become an air-raid shelter for them. I am tempted here to quote Mark Antony:

“For Brutus is an honourable man;

So are they all, all honourable men”.

Let us ask ourselves just of what is the present Speaker supposed to be guilty? Is it that he has firmly enforced the reforms in the House giving all Members a fair deal? Is it that he has been strong with MPs on both sides, in Prime Minister’s Question Time and elsewhere, who yah-boo their way through events in a way many of our voters feel sick about? Is it that he has let daylight into the House by encouraging many people from outside—charity and educational groups and others—to have access to and use of the facilities in an unprecedented fashion? If there are those in the House who are not happy with the Speaker, they can stand in the next Parliament and say their piece. They can stand up themselves. They can put up or shut up.

What we have today is a grubby piece of schoolboy intriguing that Michael Dobbs would have been ashamed to have dreamt up for one of his novels. These are matters for the House to deliberate on properly and initiate, not the Executive. These are matters of due process and due thought. After the expenses scandal in 2008, we spent two traumatic years trying painstakingly to recover the House’s powers and reputation, including through the Backbench Business Committee and the Select Committee elections, and the present Speaker has faithfully defended that process. It will not do the Government any good having their voters turned off by the pocket Machiavellis behind today’s spectacle.

While we speak, Richard III is being interred in Leicester cathedral. He was the monarch who brought a new meaning to decisiveness by arresting one of his councillors, Hastings, at a Privy Council meeting, accusing him of treason without due process and having his head chopped off on Tower hill to secure his usurpation—all within the hour. I wonder that some of those behind the motion are not mourners at the service, since they seem initiators of the methods. This is the mother of Parliaments. Commonwealth countries and Parliaments all over the world come to see it and take example from it, and if we cede our right to decide thoughtfully and after due process to any Government, in this hole-in-the-wall vote, before Parliament prorogues, we will surrender the House’s self-respect and the respect of the voters. We will turn this House into a receptacle for Executive despotism and cronyism.

Those who are tempted to look over their shoulders for advancement at those pulling the strings on this grubby occasion should remember that there will come a day when each of them needs an independent Speaker to protect their rights and interests. Even if it were just on the basis of self-interest, do Members supporting the motion want to face their voters in six weeks’ time as accomplices to this chicanery—to a process that demeans this House and gives credence to what is peddled by cynics and stand-up comics about this House? Are we to dispense, after an hour, with a process that has stood the test of time in the House for six centuries? Previous Speakers have occasionally been beheaded, murdered or killed in battle, but as far as I am aware, none has ever been stabbed in the back on the Floor of the House. Do Members want to align themselves with proceedings more fit for a Soviet-era puppet Parliament rubber-stamping edicts from dictators?

Speaker Lenthall, when he faced up to Charles I, after he burst in to arrest the five Members, said:

“I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this house is pleased to direct me”.

If Members cravenly cave in to this trumped-up device to attack an incumbent Speaker whose high crime has been to protect Members’ interests and to throw some daylight into a Parliament to redeem its reputation among a disillusioned public, they will not only dishonour the great struggle for independence from the Executive, over which a civil war was fought, but jeopardise the relevance of this great place to the people of this country, who will rightly say, six weeks from a general election, “All the problems and serious issues we face, and what on earth are these people playing at?”