Referral of Prime Minister to Committee of Privileges

John Slinger Excerpts

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate. As many colleagues on the Opposition Benches have said, it brings a sense of déjà vu. I have a rather horrible chill up my spine when I remember being on the Government Benches and being pushed by the Whips to vote for certain things.

As has already been said, we have a Prime Minister who promised to do things differently. He promised change, higher standards and transparency, and he is the ultimate arbiter and keeper of the ministerial code. Politics is often about a certain amount of deflection, but he seems to go beyond all precedent in not answering questions. He drives Mr Speaker up the wall—to the point that they have altercations in the Chamber. That is the backdrop. We have a Prime Minister who promised that he would be particularly transparent and bring forward a duty of candour law, but that was dropped. He promised higher standards, yet does not live up to it.

The hon. Member for Rugby (John Slinger), who is the new trade envoy to the Republic of Korea, is in the Chamber, and it is fabulous to see that loyalty can be rewarded. I say to him, “Well done!” If Members back the Government, even when they should not, there can be a reward for them. But, as colleagues on this side of the Chamber have said, if Members do not vote with their conscience or do the right thing when their gut tells them to, they will regret it.

[John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Graham Stuart]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman in a moment.

There is a particular change today, because we have a three-line Whip on a House matter. Members have spoken on behalf of the Government line. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth), who is in his place, said that he did not think the three-line Whip was a good idea, and others did not want to talk about it, but who was the three-line Whip for? Perhaps the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister can tell us. Labour Members have told us that they will always vote with their conscience and do the right thing, yet after the Whips had phoned round, it was decided that they must impose a three-line Whip.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), who has never been a Whip and does not have much fondness for them, has put the ghastly deed at their door. As a former Whip, I tend to think that it is more likely that the Whips did their job, giving a nuanced but properly informed answer. Then No. 10—sitting in the bunker, panicking, their only job to make sure that the Prime Minister is not replaced—said, “No, unless you can give us 100% support.” “There is no such thing as 100%,” the Chief Whip would reply. “No, no—then we insist that a three-line Whip is imposed.” And that happened.

[John Slinger]

rose—

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

rose—

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Lady, who is a brilliant tennis player and a great partner, will forgive me if I give way to the hon. Member for Rugby, whom I referenced and should therefore allow to come in.

[John Slinger]

I like the right hon. Gentleman a great deal and thank him for his kind words. The moment has somewhat passed, but he was implying that the Prime Minister is avoiding answering questions. [Interruption.] If Members will listen: this is the Prime Minister who came before the House last Monday and answered questions from right hon. and hon. Members for two and a half hours.

The right hon. Gentleman spoke about transparency, but we are talking about a Prime Minister who led a Government who are releasing all the documents to this House and the public. He can talk all he likes about transparency and answering questions, but I have just demonstrated that both those things have been achieved already.

[Graham Stuart]

As so often, the hon. Gentleman does two things brilliantly: he reinforces his merit with the Whips when it comes to a future position, yet makes our case for us. The Prime Minister was dragged before the House. It is not just me—Mr Speaker was falling out with him and he is a former Labour MP. This is the frustration of a whole nation at a man who promised that he would be open and transparent but who cannot, ever, just give a straightforward answer. It has got to the point where if he was asked whether he would like mash or new potatoes, he would start talking to his wife about pork chops. He just cannot answer the question.

I say to the hon. Member for Rugby that when the Prime Minister was dragged here—this is the issue today—he misled this House. We have gone over that; Members will be deeply relieved to hear that I will not go over it again. But he said that due process had been followed. We have evidence today: Morgan McSweeney said he did the interview. He is an old pal of Mandelson’s—the man pushing for his appointment. He is the guy who asked Mandelson the questions. Then, whoa—“Let’s review the answers that McSweeney got and get Lord Doyle”—another pal of them both—“to provide the independent review.” That is what the Prime Minister presided over, all to deliver what McSweeney also made clear today was absolutely the Prime Minister’s decision.

The Prime Minister made the decision. He got his mates in this crony boys’ club to sit around, review each other and put Mandelson into place. Then he came here—this is the point—and said that due process was followed. Due process was not followed. Only because of the Humble Address have we found out that the Cabinet Secretary’s official advice to the Prime Minister was that vetting must be done before the announcement of a political appointee—and again, the Government had to give way halfway through the debate as they could see the direction it was going in. That advice was not in the public domain when Chris Wormald, who will have to answer for his own judgments, came out and said that all due process had been followed. But anyone who could read the advice and see what happened can clearly see that it was not followed. Chris Wormald’s letter was false and wrong. I do not see how it can be squared as the great defence of the Prime Minister. We have had no answers to that point.

We have so many questions—even before we get to last week, when, as the hon. Member for Rugby said, the Prime Minister was here. Under questioning from my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, who does a brilliant job of keeping her temper while he evades and seeks not to answer, the Prime Minister said that there had been no pressure whatsoever. That is clearly not true, given that Olly Robbins repeatedly said how much pressure there was.

There are plenty of reasons to believe that the Prime Minister, who said that he was going to set a higher standard, has misled this House. That is all we need; as Mr Speaker said, we are not judge and jury today when it comes to whether he actually misled the House. That is why we have the Privileges Committee to look at the matter. It is dominated by Labour MPs, but such is the lack of confidence in No. 10—perhaps in the Whips Office and certainly in the Cabinet—that not only does the Prime Minister not trust the Labour MPs on the Privileges Committee; he does not even trust all the other Labour Members, who are being dragooned by a three-line Whip into voting for something, when no such Whip should ever have been applied.