Business of the House

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend raises a very good point. He will be aware that the national lottery has raised over £39 billion for good causes since 1994. The Government are committed to ensuring both society lotteries and the national lottery continue to thrive. There was a consultation, between June and September 2018, on the proposed reform of society lotteries to try to allow society lotteries to grow by changing sales and prize limits, while protecting the position of the national lottery. The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has said that he will respond to the consultation in the first half of this year.

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

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

Well, who would have thought it? They actually all united, Mr Speaker. They are united around a fallacy, an illusion, a fantasy. As an exponent of the elaborate richness of the English language, Mr Speaker, you will know that there is a word for their current condition—denialism, a person’s choice to deny reality as a way to avoid a psychologically uncomfortable truth. Nothing could better sum up these unicorn-chasing Tories and the way that they can interpret, “No, we will not renegotiate the political agreement” into “Yes, we will give you everything the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) wants.” It is denialism madness. At some point, however, the hard reality will have to catch up with this Government. Can the Leader of the House explain what happens when the Prime Minister inevitably comes back with nothing? What is the process then?

I am grateful to the Leader of the House for confirming that there will no longer be a February recess. I am sure that that has gone down like a bucket of sick with some of our hon. Friends who have already planned their holidays. What is going to happen during that week? Is it going to be Brexit-related business? Is it going to be business like the business we see for next week? What happens to departmental questions? The normal rota has already been done, so can she explain to us exactly what we will be doing for that week given that the recess is to be lost? Mr Speaker, you will remember that I asked the Leader of the House quite clearly last week whether the February recess would be cancelled. “No” was the answer, just like she told me that the meaningful vote would not be delayed just before it actually was.

I have raised the issue of the feral pack-like behaviour of Conservative Members before. Yesterday, when my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) was on his feet, it was simply appalling. Every mention of Scotland or Scottish sent them into apoplexy, with howls of derision even peppered with expletives. These are tribunes of the middle and upper classes. A good proportion of them went to private schools. What on earth happens in those private schools to cause behaviour such as that? The people of Scotland are watching and simply concluding that this House is not prepared to listen to us and will try to shout down every attempt to stand up for our country. We have a very elegant solution: it is called having a Government and independent Parliament of our own.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the issue of denialism. I suggest that it is the Scottish nationalists in this place who are in denial over the result of the Scottish independence referendum. It is interesting that one of my favourite newspapers, The National, reports that the hon. Gentleman himself is questioning the merits of a second referendum on EU membership because he feels it might harm the Scot nats’ chances of a second referendum on Scottish independence. If anyone is a denialist in this place, it is him. Not only that; he is also a pessimist. It is deeply disappointing that he is already saying that the Government’s attempts will fail. If he looks carefully at what has happened in the past two and a half years, he will see that the Prime Minister’s deal for withdrawing from the EU seeks to ensure that we can have our cake and eat it. We have successfully cherry-picked and done all the things that the EU said we would not do, because we will be protecting jobs and our economy at the same time as leaving the EU and fulfilling the referendum result, so he should be a bit more optimistic.

The hon. Gentleman asked about Brexit-related business during the second week of February. He will appreciate that there is a huge amount of Brexit-related business. He criticised the business for next week, but these are very important Brexit-related statutory instruments, as well as some instruments that are always debated on the Floor of the House of Commons. The House should wish to discuss those very important pieces of parliamentary businesses.

The hon. Gentleman also suggested—it was somewhat inverted-snobbery—that Members on the Government Benches have all been to private school. I am an ex-grammar school girl, and the Government side is dominated by people who have worked hard in this life and want to do something for their country. He should be ashamed for saying that, but not nearly as ashamed as his right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) should be for his appalling remarks in the Chamber suggesting that there is anything other than a 100% commitment to the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. That was a dangerous and appalling thing to suggest, and it was completely untrue.