Business of the House

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The House will decide its sitting hours—that is a matter for colleagues—pursuant to what the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) has said. I simply underline the point that I am a servant of the House, and whatever hours the House wants to sit to debate important matters, I am very happy to be in the Chair.

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

I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business for next week. His response thus far to the High Court ruling simply is not good enough. This is an important, significant ruling, which suggests that this House is sovereign on these matters. As a leader of this House, not just of this Government, he should respect that. What plans does he therefore have to bring an early vote on these matters to the House? It is little wonder that the Foreign Secretary compared this process to the Titanic, because what we have is a stricken, doomed liner going to the bottom of the ocean, taking its captain with it. Well, we in Scotland are preparing our lifeboat to get out of this, because there is no way we are going to the deeps with this stricken Government.

May we have a debate on animal welfare? The nation is simply gripped by the story of Kim the Alsatian, and how the poor dog came to meet her ultimate maker. Lord Heseltine, of course, claims he did not strangle that dog, but it would not be the first time he had tried to dispatch a frothing-at-the-mouth but much-loved family member for the betterment of this nation.

Looking at the business, what meagre business we have. It is full of general debates and Backbench Business debates. I am glad that we have some time for the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), but there is no legislation, save one piece programmed for a week on Monday. It took the last Parliament four years to acquire the moniker of the zombie Parliament; it looks like this Leader of the House is trying to achieve that in less than two years.

[Mr Lidington]

The hon. Gentleman is trying to work himself up into a sense of rage that, I am afraid, I find wholly synthetic. The judgment today is some 30 or 40 pages in length. The idea that I would come to the House within an hour of that judgment being read out in court and be able to provide the sort of detailed analysis and responses to questions that the hon. Gentleman seeks is, quite frankly, wrong-headed. That is why the Government are offering the oral statement when my right hon. and learned Friends have had the opportunity to look at the judgment in detail so that we can respond as best we can, given the sub judice rule, to the questions from hon. Members on both sides of the House.

When it comes to the business before the House, I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is not correct. I did say that we have legislation on both Monday 14 and Tuesday 15 November. I am asked all the time in these sessions for debates on European matters. The Government are now offering, in Government time, a debate on European matters—on workers’ rights, which is something the Scottish National party professes to care about a great deal. Now the hon. Gentleman argues that, instead of that, we should have Government legislation. I think he needs to make up his mind where his priorities really lie.