Appointment of Lord Lebedev

Debate between Munira Wilson and Shaun Bailey

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Shaun Bailey]

I hear the hon. Member’s point about transparency and I get that—there is a broader conversation to be had about that—but as my right hon. and learned Friend the Paymaster General stated, we cannot do that at the risk of undermining the processes that are there. What I will say to the hon. Member—perhaps she and I will agree on this—is let us change the process. How about that? There is stunned silence at a Conservative MP suggesting changing the process, but that is the point I am trying to make.

There is a fundamental flaw in today’s motion. Okay, the documentation is released, but what then? Labour seems to be clamouring for something that it skirts around in the motion but does not go forward to suggest change. It strikes me as absurd.

[Munira Wilson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Shaun Bailey]

I suppose I will give way to the hon. Member.

[Munira Wilson]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He says that there are no ideas forthcoming from the Opposition on how to change the process. Let me give him a bold and radical idea that my party has been championing for decades, which is that we should have a fully elected upper Chamber, not an appointed one. We would therefore not have to have this appointment process at all, and we would not have to have this discussion at all.

[Shaun Bailey]

Just to clarify, I never said that the Liberal Democrats did not have an idea, just the Labour party. I am fully aware of the hon. Member’s party’s position.

Let me respond to the undertones of the debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland pointed out, our response to Ukraine has not been hindered by this situation at all—with the 22,000 troops that have been trained, 10,000 missiles, the fact that we had the President of Ukraine appear in this Chamber and that he has thanked this Government for their intervention in Ukraine. The Ukrainian people say that this country stepped forward and they see us as their biggest ally in their fight for freedom—the undertone of the motion and the debate is disgraceful.

The motion is fundamentally flawed. I have no issue with backing a motion when it works, but this one does not even meet the procedure it tries to use. I come back to the point that we have been told that this is not party political, but I have been sitting in the debate for an hour now and I do not know how it could not be perceived as party political. Clearly, there are broader conversations to be had and I look forward to those ideas, but the motion is flawed and does not work. It is procedurally just not right and it seeks to undermine the existing processes, putting at risk the disclosure and transparency that we are trying to put across and the confidence people have to engage with the system. The motion is completely flawed, as I say, and it cannot be supported today.