Business of the House

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2022 Commons Chamber

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

I suppose the only statement we want in the next few days is one confirming that the Prime Minister has written to Her Majesty the Queen to offer his resignation. The absurd and laughable defence that he did not know he was at a party has insulted and offended a nation, who now just want him gone. For the Leader of the House to stand there and say that somehow the rules were wrong just compounds this.

There are three options available to the Prime Minister: first, he somehow manages to find some self-respect and dignity, and goes of his own volition; secondly, Conservative Members somehow find a collective backbone and compel him to go; or, thirdly, we all wait until an election, and a good proportion of them will go down with him. That is what they are left with.

Now, of course, the Scottish Tories know exactly how the rest of Scotland feels after the Leader of the House poured his scorn and contempt upon them last night. According to him, the democratically elected Scottish Tory leader is an insignificant figure—a “lightweight”, a nobody—presumably just like every single Tory MSP who agrees with their Scottish leader. The Scottish Tories are supposed to be the praetorian guard of their precious Union, and the Leader of the House has just undermined them and thrown them under the proverbial bus. If this is how the Government treat even the Scottish Tories, why should the Scottish people even entertain being any part of their useless Union?

Does the Leader of the House want to take this opportunity now to apologise to the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) for his remarks last night, or is he prepared to make them once again in this House just to confirm what we in Scotland all know, which is that this is a Government who could not care less about Scotland and Scottish democracy?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The problem with the hon. Gentleman’s approach to business questions is that he is so angry every week that one never knows whether it is real or synthetic. He could have called for the Prime Minister to resign at every business questions at which we have exchanged pleasantries since I became Leader of the House, other than during his brief sabbatical away from the role, so I think his call for the Prime Minister to resign is not one of which any notice will be taken.

The Prime Minister won an election, and that is the basis on which our democracy in this country works. He won a majority of 80, and he has done so much to the benefit of this country in the last two years. If we look at the whole panoply of decisions made with regard to covid, the Prime Minister has consistently got them right. He got the vaccine right, he got ending the lockdown in the summer right, he got the refusal to impose new restrictions before Christmas right, and he got furlough and the £400 billion to support the economy right.

Again and again, the Prime Minister got the decisions right that mean this country is coming out of the pandemic in a better position than other countries across the world. It is something we should recognise, and that required good, solid, decisive leadership. That is not beginning to say that every decision made was perfect—that would not be within human nature—but the result of what has happened following the decisions that the Prime Minister has made has been to allow this country to do better than others as we come out of this pandemic.