Business of the House

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

It was good to see the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee in his place earlier this week and I hope it will not be long before he is again playing a regular part in our Thursday exchanges. In the meantime, I say to my hon. Friend that we always take seriously the Backbench Business Committee’s requests for time, but the reality is that there is pressure on both Government and Backbench Business time and we must all select priorities. I am very happy to look at the case my hon. Friend and the Committee make for protected time on specific Thursdays, but I would be reluctant to agree a general rule for all Thursdays because sometimes Backbench Business debates peter out before the allotted time has been completed—that may be rare, but it does occasionally happen. I think my hon. Friend will acknowledge that we have in the past tried, where we know that there are statements coming, to protect the Backbench Business agenda.

On my hon. Friend’s point about Harrow, he, as always, speaks strongly on behalf of his constituents, and I am sure he will seek to catch your eye, Mr Speaker, for a possible Adjournment debate.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

May I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business for next week and wish everybody a happy St Patrick’s day?

There is so much kicking around this morning that it is difficult to know where to start, but how about we start with securing an urgent statement on the Electoral Commission’s record fine on a political party for breaching electoral law? We need to hear in that statement that this Government are taking these allegations seriously, and not hitting out petulantly, as some Members have done this morning, at the Electoral Commission and treating it with contempt. Our electoral laws are critically important to protecting our democracy, and the Conservative party will now be investigated by the Metropolitan police, just as I asked the police to do last year. A sum of £70,000 is absolute peanuts to the Conservative party, so will the Leader of the House now say today that it will fully comply, and take part in every single one of those police investigations? This could well be the “cash for honours” of this Parliament.

May we have a debate on automotive manoeuvres? The screeching of yesterday’s U-turn on national insurance contributions is still ringing in our ears, and the skid marks go all the way from here to the doors of No. 10. I do not think we have ever seen a Budget unravel as dramatically as last week’s has done. Perhaps we need to get our Budgets manifesto-proofed, or perhaps we should get Laura Kuenssberg to deliver next year’s Budget from the Dispatch Box.

Lastly, will there be a statement from the Government approving a section 30 order to approve a legal independence referendum if, as is likely, the Scottish Parliament votes next week to request one? Surely there can be no case for standing in the way of democracy or defying the will of the democratically elected Parliament in Scotland. I say ever so gently to the Leader of the House that if this Government are thinking for one minute of standing in the way of Scottish democracy, that would be the biggest possible recruiting sergeant for the cause of Scottish independence.

[Mr Lidington]

The Government will of course consider carefully any recommendations from the Electoral Commission for a change in regulatory powers. We are already considering a number of possible changes to electoral arrangements, following the report by my right hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Sir Eric Pickles) on electoral corruption. I have to say to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), however, that complaints from his party, of all parties, about the use of battle buses are more than a little odd. It is not exactly a secret that, at the 2015 general election, the Scottish National party flew Nicola Sturgeon from constituency to constituency in support of its candidates, which suggests to me that some of his party’s complaints in this respect are both spurious and hypocritical—