Business of the House

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is one of Parliament’s great characters, so I am not in the least surprised to discover that he fulfils that position in the all-party group. He is right: there is a world of difference between those who travel this country bringing fairgrounds and entertainment to our communities, and a great time for young people, and those who occupy public land illegally and leave behind a vast amount of mess to be cleared up at huge public expense. We should always be proud to make that distinction in this House. My hon. Friend does a great job with his work, and he is right to say that that distinction is enormously important.

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

I thank the Leader of the House for announcing next week’s business.

Another week, another EVEL shambles—this week the now infamous iPad malfunction. How could they possibly do that to the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), the most English of all English Members in the House? A man who sits proudly in his Union Jack underpants and whose ringtone is, “There’ll Always Be an England”, has been treated as mere and meagre Scot and subject to the second-class status that we have in this House. “Reinstate the hon. Member for Romford” is the call from the SNP Benches. Seriously, the confusion around EVEL continues, and the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee West (Chris Law) deserves a better response than we got from the Deputy Leader of the House—perhaps the Leader of the House can help us with that.

The Leader of the House has always characterised the double majority and the Scottish veto—or the English veto, as we call it—as something that would give consent to a particular instrument. This week we had a measure that withheld consent but that was subject to the EVEL mechanism and the double majority vote on which we were obviously subject to a English veto. What is the response of the Leader of the House to that? When we start to distinguish Members according to geography and nationality, that will always be reinterpreted and extended. By the end of this Parliament, we will have a real divide in this House. That may be the Leader of the House’s legacy as he goes off to fight one of his Euro-battles to get the country out of Europe.

Are the Government prepared to respect the House of Lords vote on the Trade Union Bill? I am not a great supporter of the House of Lords, but I note what it did this week. More important to me is whether the Leader of the House will respect the recommendation of the Scottish Parliament’s Devolution Committee that Scotland be excluded from the scope of the Bill. We do not want the Bill to destroy the very good trade union relations that we enjoy in Scotland. This is a deeply ideological Tory Bill and the Government are trying impose it on a country that does not do Tory. Can we leave it at the border and not have this Tory Trade Union Bill in Scotland?

Growing numbers of people are concerned about the situation in Yemen. Our role in equipping and advising the Saudi air force in its bombing campaign was rightly raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Angus Robertson). We have sold £10 billion-worth of aircraft to the Saudi air force, yet the Arms Export Controls Committee has lain dormant since the general election. Will the Leader of the House now pledge to get the Committee up and running as quickly as possible, so there is at least some form of scrutiny and oversight of arms exports to countries such as Saudi Arabia?

We heard all sorts of rumours yesterday about a possible maingate vote on Trident, which I am very disappointed to see is not in the Business statement. We are now in a situation where all of us could make a decision about maingate. All the major parties have now got their positions, which are apparent for everybody to see. The Conservatives—the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) is nodding—want to spend billions of pounds of our money on useless obsolete weapons of mass destruction. The SNP is implacably opposed to that spending. The Labour party, of course, has the yellow submarine option, which is maybe for and maybe against, while at the same time sending submarines out without any weaponry whatever. So we are all in a position to make a decision. Will the Leader of the House now get on with this, so we can have a proper decision and see how the parties respond?

[Chris Grayling]

I wish all our friends in the Scottish National party a very enjoyable Burns night next week. I do not know whether they will be piping in the haggis in quite the traditional way after our discussions last week—they should perhaps be piping in the black pudding from Stornoway; whether my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) would agree with that is a different question—but I wish them all a very enjoyable evening of celebration next week.

On the English votes for English laws vote earlier this week, yes there was a mistake. However, I do not believe we should condemn human error in a project that has gone pretty smoothly. I do not think anybody would wish to exclude my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) from anything, nor would he allow himself to be excluded. As the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) says, he is the ultimate English nationalist. He is also a United Kingdom nationalist as well. That, I think, is the point the hon. Gentleman misses about the Trade Union Bill. He talks about imposing something on the country. We are all part of one country. That is what the Scottish people decided in the referendum. I know it is difficult for the SNP to accept that, but the reality is that this is a United Kingdom Bill. I appreciate that SNP Members may disagree with it, but it will be voted on by the United Kingdom Parliament and I expect that it will be passed by the United Kingdom Parliament.

On Yemen, in Prime Minister’s questions the Prime Minister made it very clear, in response to the leader of the SNP at Westminster, the right hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson), exactly what the position is in Saudi Arabia and exactly what our role—indeed, non-role—is in the conflict taking place in Yemen. We all want to see a solution: a proper Government who can represent all the people of Yemen. The hon. Gentleman talks about the Arms Export Controls Committee. It can, of course, meet whenever it chooses. It is a partnership of a number of Select Committees. It is not for the Government to instruct Select Committees to meet.

The hon. Gentleman was right to highlight, as I did earlier, the chaos of the Labour party’s policy on Trident. I do not know where it stands now. Does it want to build submarines but send them to sea empty? That is probably the case. At least the SNP has a clear position. The fact is that the Labour party is all over the place on this issue. When we bring it to the House, I suspect our parties will have an interesting time exposing the Labour party’s fraudulent position.