Sittings of the House (29 March)

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

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

I will confine my remarks exclusively to the motion before us this afternoon—I am sure you will be pleased about that, Mr Speaker—and I will leave it to others to continue to debate the merits of the motion tomorrow.

I do not think I have ever seen in the last 18 years a start of a business motion which has been preceded by endless points of order. That more than anything demonstrates the mess this place is in—the absolute guddle we have in procedure and process. All these points of order are trying to examine and define and find out exactly what is going on. I am pretty certain all of our constituents, who are taking a great deal of interest in our proceedings just now, are absolutely bemused and mystified, frustrated and increasingly angry about the way we do our business in this House, with all these issues trying to come to the front of our attention. It has almost got to the point in this House where it is so broken and the debate is so corrupted that we are now having debates through points of order. I can barely imagine that we have reached that stage just now; it demonstrates how badly broken things are.

The sitting tomorrow is all about the Government’s latest wheeze to get their doomed Brexit deal through. They are inviting us to consider the withdrawal agreement without the political declaration attached. It is a meaningful vote, but it is a sort of Schrödinger’s meaningful vote: it is both alive and dead at the same time. After three years without any attempt to create any sort of secure consensus on the way forward, and after two months of defeats and this House taking control yesterday, this is the last throw of the dice for the Government tomorrow. It seems that even the Prime Minister offering herself as a sacrifice to the Brexiteers this week was not good enough for them. As the First Minister put it so elegantly in the Scottish Parliament today, this is a Prime Minister who threw herself on her sword and missed. It cannot get any more calamitous than that.

There is just one more issue about tomorrow. As Scottish National party Members, we are all, as you would expect, Scottish Members of Parliament. That means that there are particular issues when it comes to our travel arrangements. We spend more than half a day getting to this House and half a day getting back—that is one full day of travelling just to be able to come down here and do our business. This Government have so disrespected all of us who have to travel great distances. Confirming only this morning that the House will be sitting tomorrow is totally unacceptable—

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

rose—

[Pete Wishart]

And I look forward to the hon. Gentleman agreeing with me.

[Simon Hoare]

Nobody is forcing the hon. Gentleman to be here.

[Pete Wishart]

This is just part of the pattern that we expect from some hon. Members. “Just go home!” “Go away!” That is what they feel about us. I would be happy to oblige the hon. Gentleman, and the way that we can elegantly achieve that is to secure independence for our nation.

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a point about travel. I say to him, my constituency neighbour, that our constituents in North Perthshire and South Perthshire will be plenty happy for us to be here making some of the biggest and most important decisions in this Parliament in modern political history. These decisions cannot wait any longer.

[Pete Wishart]

I am pretty sure that the electors of Perthshire would be delighted if we were here making decisions, but that is the exact opposite of what we are doing. We have probably not made any decisions in this House for the past few months, and he is responsible for that.

Lastly, I totally and utterly support the shadow Leader of the House when she said that it is absolutely disgraceful that we were presented with tomorrow’s motion only 10 minutes before this debate was supposed to start.

[Martin Whitfield]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the business of the House motion makes reference to complying with Acts and the European Union documents, yet the motion that we are debating tomorrow acknowledges that we are not going to follow UK legislation and that we will catch up at some point in the future?

[Pete Wishart]

Absolutely, and I raised the question this morning with the Speaker about what exactly we are doing about section 13 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. The hon. Gentleman is right. We have not seen the withdrawal and implementation Bill. We are expected to make critical decisions about the future of this country and about how we should progress Brexit without knowing what the Bill is. The Government are offering the ultimate blind Brexit. We are expected to give them a blank cheque to negotiate the political agreement as they see fit. This is the last throw of the dice for them. This is the only place they have left. The meaningful vote is dead, but they have tried to resurrect it by splitting it into two parts.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an important point about a blind Brexit. Does he agree that the way in which the motion has been tabled goes against the spirit of this House, where we have been trying to expand and understand where there is consensus, and that it instead contracts the debate by trying to separate the debate about the future? That is at the very core of the debate, and this is why we do not want to leave without knowing where we are going to. It is like moving house and leaving your home without knowing where you are going to be living.

[Pete Wishart]

I have heard that analogy before, and the hon. Lady is absolutely right.

We can compare what happened yesterday when this House was able to consider all sorts of measures and ways forward in order to see whether there was any sort of consensus across the House on how we should determine and progress these ideas. Tomorrow, on the other hand, is all about trying to satisfy Conservative Back Benchers, with no attempt to reach out to the rest of the House. That is why I believe that tomorrow’s motion will ultimately fail. This is the last chance for the Government to bring it back, and the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) can be certain that the Scottish National party will be here to take part in tomorrow’s debate even though we have hundreds of miles to travel. We will ensure that the motion fails tomorrow and that the interests of our country are maintained and progressed, and we will look forward to that. As an exercise, this is totally and utterly consistent with the chaotic cluelessness that lies at the heart of this Tory Brexit. This Tory Government have divided that nation and taken us to the brink. The SNP will be here tomorrow, and we will be voting the motion down.

--- Later in debate ---

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

I hear cheers from the Tory Benches for Scottish independence. Is that a first? Are the benefits of Brexit finally coming to us?

[Pete Wishart]

My hon. Friend will, like me, remember that tomorrow was also supposed to signal the start of the festival of Brexit, at which the Attorney General, doing his best Gilbert and Sullivan, was going to be out there as the compere, talking about all the wonderful achievements of post-Brexit Britain? What happened to that?

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The humiliation for the Brexiteers is greater and deeper than any single Scottish nationalist could have imagined. Not only are they here because the European Union demands that they be here, but they have to put off their festivals as a result of the European Union’s demand. It is humiliation for them.