Conduct of the Right Hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip

Hannah Bardell Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

I would like to say what a pleasure it has been to listen to the single transferable Whip’s speech that seems to have passed from one end of the Tory Benches to the other, but I am comparatively early in my parliamentary career and I have no wish to be hauled up for misleading the House.

Plenty of criticism can be made of policy, but the bit that everyone on the Government Benches, from the Minister to the Back Benchers, seems to have completely missed is that this debate is about the probity and suitability of the current occupant of No. 10 Downing Street to be there and to continue carrying out his duties as Prime Minister.

When I first started taking an interest in politics, I was a student during the tail-end of John Major’s time in Downing Street. There were scandals aplenty then, like now, from the petty and the embarrassing through to the corruption of cash for questions and the outright duplicity of the arms to Iraq affair. It was hard to imagine that the UK might ever again be led by a Government so chaotic, so lacking in scruple, so willing to bend the truth and so willing to hawk themselves around the broadcasting studios to assert that forwards is backwards and black is white, yet here we are. Although we can all no doubt highlight points along that trajectory where things really started heading for the ground, I do not think any reasonable person could dispute that the present holder of the office of Prime Minister has taken us to this nadir of public trust in Government and politics.

It is all part of a pattern of behaviour. If you want a photo opportunity in a hospital but can’t be bothered to wear a mask, just ignore the instruction to wear one. If you don’t like the Electoral Commission investigating who funds your party, your takeaways or your flat renovations, emasculate the Electoral Commission. You don’t like the fact that people without ready access to ID tend not to vote for your party—try to introduce voter ID. You don’t like the fact that voters in devolved nations don’t elect enough representatives of your party to have any influence—try to bypass devolution. You accidentally create a border in the Irish sea—just pretend it does not exist and tell people that black is white.

This Government clearly think the rules do not apply to them; it is one rule for the Government and another rule for everybody else. It comes from the top, led by a Prime Minister who clearly does not think that there are any rules at all or that if there are, they should not apply to him.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that for all this talk of the levelling-up agenda, when it comes to Scotland it is clear that it is a scorched earth agenda? Whether we are talking about carbon capture in his part of the country or the Valneva contract to deliver 100 million vaccines, which we need right now, this Prime Minister is not capable of doing the very basics and telling the truth.

[Richard Thomson]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and she says it very eloquently and succinctly. We have a crisis of confidence in this country. We have a crisis of confidence in the Prime Minister, who is clearly not fit for the job with which he has been entrusted. This is being aided and abetted by the silence and complicity of far too many Conservative Members, and I cannot wait to see which Lobby the Scottish Conservative contingent, in particular, chooses to go through this evening.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Iain Stewart)]

May I start by wishing you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and colleagues across the House, a very happy St Andrew’s Day. Perhaps after this heated and charged debate, we might all enjoy a little of Scotland’s national drink to toast what unites us and what divides us.

I will endeavour to reply to as many Members as possible in the few minutes that I have. I apologise if I am not able to pick up on everyone’s comments. As it is St Andrew’s Day, it is probably appropriate for me to start by referring to the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) who is, sadly, not in her place at the minute, but her seat contains St Andrew’s. She made a couple of important points, but this debate is a wasted opportunity today. If the real concern for the separatists on the SNP Benches was to take forward the debate on standards in public life, we could have had a debate on the Committee’s report and some of the related issues on that, but, no, they chose not to do so. The hon. Lady also suggested that the centralising power of the Scottish Government could properly be examined—issues that really matter to people in Scotland. But no, we did not discuss that.

It is disappointing but not entirely surprising that we have spent our time today responding to the desire of SNP Members once again to engage in the divisive, splitting-up policies that appeal to their fan base in the wake of their recent conference. Perhaps, as my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Antony Higginbotham) pointed out, it is to give them fresh social media clips to post on Twitter and elsewhere. It was pointed out to me during the debate that SNP command and control was tweeting about this debate using an old photograph of the Chamber, so unless SNP Members have had a complete costume change during the debate, perhaps this is the fresh material that they need.

Of course, I did not expect SNP Members to arrive here with a long list of the ways in which membership of the Union benefits Scotland, or the many ways in which this Government are investing in the future of Scotland as we navigate our way through the pandemic. They want to talk of the Prime Minister’s conduct. I am happy to talk of the Prime Minister’s conduct in securing for Scotland the roll-out of the covid-19 vaccine, saving lives and stopping the spread of the virus. Today, the conduct of the Prime Minister has been to set out how we are going to ramp up the booster programme to give us the best possible defence against the current variant.

[Hannah Bardell]

Will the Minister give way?

[Iain Stewart]

The hon. Lady must forgive me; I have to respond to a lot of her colleagues.

We could have been debating the important issue of how we respond sensibly to this new variant. Of course, I would not expect the SNP to highlight the way in which this Government have supported thousands of businesses in Scotland, with more than £4 billion of loans through the bounce back loan scheme and the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme. It took 13 minutes only for the reality to be revealed—that this is actually all about separation and the SNP’s desire to achieve it. That is what this is all about, not the real issues that are of importance to the people of Scotland.

Let me turn to the contribution of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds). I do feel some sympathy for her, given the massed ranks of two colleagues with her—two and half perhaps; I am not quite sure where Labour is with that. The hon. Lady said something quite surprising. She said that Labour Members are not here today because it is an SNP debate, as if that exempts them from talking about these issues. Has Labour given up in Scotland? Does it fall solely to the Conservative party to be the defender of the Union? I really think that her colleagues should take a little bit more interest in this matter.

My right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) made a hugely important contribution, spelling out the reality amid all the false accusations about the procurement of vital equipment during the early stages of the pandemic. We were in a race against time to get that equipment, and he rightly spelt out what happened. This nonsense about crony contracts is just not fit for purpose. He also made the important point that our vaccine programme was UK-funded, using universities across the UK; that is the reality of the Union.

The right hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie), for whom I have a lot of affection—we have worked collaboratively on issues affecting his constituency or nearby—made a number of accusations that I really cannot allow to lie. First, he said that we were engaged in various acts of voter suppression regarding voter ID. I have to reveal to him that we already have voter ID in one part of the United Kingdom—Northern Ireland—and there is no evidence that it suppresses voter turnout. He also cited the boundary review, as if it was unnecessary. I looked up the electorate in his constituency, which is approximately 66,000. I have nearly 100,000 electors, and is it not a basic point of fairness that we each represent approximately the same number of voters? His final point was to reference a Supreme Court judgment. He seems to have forgotten that the Supreme Court recently ruled against the Scottish Government when they tried to exceed the powers of the devolution settlement—and this is a party that talks about respecting devolution. I have to say it was off the mark.

I am not going to be able to respond to many more contributions, but I do have to respond to the very important point made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie). At the moment his constituents are without power, heating and basic services. He wants to know how this Government and the Scottish Government can work together to help those people in his constituency. That is what we should be debating today, not partisan red meat to throw at the fanbase to cover up internal divisions over the next steps to independence.

This Prime Minister is passionate about the United Kingdom. He is setting out some of the long-term solutions to the challenges we face, like on social care—an issue that has been ducked by Government for too long. That is the conduct of this Prime Minister. It is a Prime Minister I am proud to serve in this Government, and I urge colleagues to reject the motion before us tonight.

Question put.