Business of the House

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

Can I say to my hon. Friend that I am delighted for him that he has been fully acquitted? I congratulate him on that. My heart goes out to him over the difficult time he has had in recent years in clearing his name. I think all hon. Members across the House would recognise, on a non-partisan basis, what a difficult time he has been through. It is fantastic that he has been found not guilty of any offence.

It has become apparent from broader legal proceedings that election law on spending in 2015 was fragmented and unclear, with even the courts divided on the interpretation of the law. The Government will take steps, working alongside the Electoral Commission, to ensure there is a clearer and more transparent framework in future elections. It is in everybody’s interests that we get this right, and the Government are committed to protecting and strengthening electoral integrity.

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

I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business for next week. I join the tributes to Lord Ashdown and Lord Foster, congratulate Sir Roy Stone on his well-deserved honour and wish Fiona Channon all the best.

Yesterday was truly appalling and embarrassing. For the second business week in a row, Government Members were reduced to nothing more than a braying mob, finding conspiracy in car stickers. Once again, we found the Leader of the House centre stage as the principal cheerleader, egging her colleagues on in that unedifying spectacle. This has to stop, Mr Speaker, and the Conservatives must start to respect the authority of the House and the authority of your office.

This is utterly appalling hypocrisy. The Government have done their level best to curtail debate and withhold information from the House. They were even compelled by the courts to allow us to have a vote on leaving the European Union, and only successive votes of the House got them to reveal vital information about their Brexit deal. They have been found in contempt of Parliament. It is absolutely right that they are stopped.

Do you know what, Mr Speaker? This is called taking back control—a concept the Government might be a little familiar with. The House must have its collective view known, and you, Mr Speaker, are to be commended for ensuring that the view of the House will always come first. The Government had better get used to it, because Parliament is increasingly asserting itself. As this chaotic Government continue spectacularly to collapse, this House and its membership will pick up the slack. If the Government want Government versus Parliament, they will be on the losing side, because we are now in the majority.

There is no business scheduled for a week on Monday, the day the Government are now obliged to come back with an alternative to the Prime Minister’s deal. Will the Leader of the House confirm that that is exactly what they will do? Will they come back and explain the options, and is she actively considering what those options are? This feels a little like the end of Tory days. It is unusual for a country to witness such a chaotic and spectacularly shambolic collapse of a Government. Perhaps we can have a debate—we might call it a vote of confidence—so that this country can be shot of this chaotic Government once and for all.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I genuinely value the hon. Gentleman’s views. I listened to him very carefully, and I agree with him that taking back control is absolutely essential. The fatal flaw with his assertion is that what happened yesterday was not Parliament taking back control. What happened yesterday and in the days running up to it was that a number of hon. Members tried to table amendments to yesterday’s business of the House motion. [Interruption.] A number of them, on both sides of the House, tried to put forward amendments to the business motion. The Table Office said the motion was unamendable and undebatable. [Interruption.] An hon. Gentleman shouts from a sedentary position, “How do you know?” I know that the Table Office turned Members away, saying that the motion was unamendable and undebatable.

If the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire looks carefully at “Erskine May”, he will see that “forthwith” means unamendable and undebatable. As for his point about Parliament taking back control, the issue is that the role of the Chair is to uphold the rules that Parliament has made for itself, not to change those rules arbitrarily. So yesterday was not an example of Parliament taking back control, but an example of a differentiation between the Members who were told that the motion was unamendable and undebatable, and those who were told differently.

The hon. Gentleman asked whether the Government would accept the Grieve amendment; of course the Government will do so. The Prime Minister has shown her willingness always to return to the House at the first possible opportunity if there is anything to report in relation to our Brexit deal, and we will continue to do so.

Let me finally deal with the hon. Gentleman’s point about “no confidence”. As I have said time and again, should this House have no confidence and should the official Opposition put an issue of no confidence to the House under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, the Government will provide time for it to be debated, as is the convention. The official Opposition have not chosen to do so, and therefore this House has confidence in Her Majesty’s Government.