Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill: Committee Stage

John Lamont Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

She is not nodding her head; she thinks that it is working satisfactorily. Okay, I may be on my own. In my view, and probably in that of most Members on the Opposition Benches, something is wrong. Something is not working with the system of dealing with private Members’ Bills. There is real disappointment and anger in this House about how all this is working out. This is the third time we have debated it, as the Leader of the House said, and it is not getting any better—if anything, it is getting worse. After her lecture to the House today, it feels a lot worse to Opposition Members.

If money resolutions are a sticking point, how about we try to design some sort of solution? I have tried to suggest this notion to Conservative Members: if they do not like something, they should come here on a Friday to oppose it and get their way; and if they do not get their way, they should accept the role of the House. We are going to have to try to find a way round this. We cannot continually come back to the point where Members secure support for their Bill from this House, believe that they are making progress with it, and then are ultimately blocked by a Government who do not like it and so are not prepared to give it a money resolution.

I do not know how we might do this, but may I suggest to the Leader of the House that we try to get a cross-party solution? I know that it has been suggested that the matter should be put to the Procedure Committee. That has happened twice in my time in this House. We have had the Procedure Committee consider private Members’ Bills, and maybe it should do so again. How about if all the parties got together and tried to see what we could do to ensure that we get round some of these very tricky issues? The current situation is not good enough.

I was out in my constituency campaigning over the weekend. Our constituents look at these sorts of issues and get more and more concerned. We have a particular issue in Scotland. People in Scotland are furious about the disrespect that this Government have shown to our nation in taking about 15 minutes to turn the devolution settlement on its head. However, they are also seeing some of these issues about private Members’ Bill going through. [Interruption.] I know that Conservative Members do not like it, but this perception is building up. I saw over the weekend that there is bewilderment more than hostility. What is the House of Commons doing? Why cannot we properly debate issues that are really important? Why cannot we consider private Members’ Bills?

[John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)]

What my constituents and most people in Scotland, I think, got frustrated with and annoyed by was the pantomime performance we saw last week of SNP Members storming out of the House, not representing the interests of their constituents or of Scotland. The Leader of the House spoke very well about the importance of the Government keeping control of financial resolutions. I would be interested to know if the right hon. Gentleman would advocate the same proposal for the Scottish Parliament with regard to how the Scottish Government manage similar matters.

[Pete Wishart]

First of all, I am not a right hon. Member. For some reason, Scottish National party Members are not made Privy Counsellors, regardless of how long we have served in this House. I thank the hon. Gentleman for the promotion, but I have never actually secured that position.

I wish that the hon. Gentleman had been on the streets in Perth, as I was, on Saturday. He would have seen the deep frustration and anger that there was with this House after the massive disrespect demonstrated to our Parliament—the Scottish Parliament—which secured 15 minutes of debate before its devolution settlement was turned on its head. There is a growing frustration with this House as more and more people, particularly in Scotland, are seeing—because they like watching us speak—how this House is treated. There is real bewilderment about what is going on.