Business of the House

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, and it seems that there was some confusion over forests. He is of course the Member for the Forest of Dean, and my right hon. Friend the Chief Whip is the Member for Sherwood forest, where, I seem to remember, Robin Hood spent his formative years. My right hon. Friend’s point about the Labour party policy is why we want a general election; it would be wonderful to put that fantasy world to the British people and I am confident about what they would choose.

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

I, too, congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on the stellar shift you have put in once again today. I think you must now have the most famous bladder in political history, given the time you have spent in that Chair. May I also share your congratulations and thanks to the staff who have been assembled at such short notice and have served us so diligently once again today?

I thank the Leader of the House for his very brief statement on the business for tomorrow. Of course, we all know that this is the last place he wanted to be and that this is the last thing he wanted to do. What does he bring to this House, after all this hard work to get the House to sit again? A motion to simply abandon the place all over again. After we got the courts to reopen this place, he wants us to agree voluntarily to close it all down again so that they can all swan off to their conference. As a member of a party that is never, ever covered by the so-called conference recess—I remind the Leader of the House that the Queen’s Speech that he had scheduled would have been on the first full day of our conference—can I tell him, with all due respect, that he can go and stuff that notion where his top hat don’t shine?

Perhaps while we are at this, and while we are still thinking about the business for tomorrow, we could ask about the Opposition days that the Scottish National party is due—the day and a half that we have still to get on the Floor of the House. Perhaps that could be done tomorrow, because what we have tomorrow as the main item of business is a Brexiteer whinge fest debate. Can we not instead have a debate about obeying the courts and respecting the rule of law?

I share what has been said by so many right hon. and hon. Members tonight about the tone of the debate. I have to say that today we heard the most undignified diatribe from the Prime Minister, which was simply unworthy of the House. I have been in this place for 18 years and I have never heard such a poor statement from any sitting Prime Minister—no apology, no contrition, just petulance and defiance.

The Prime Minister said that the Supreme Court was wrong. Notionally, the Leader of the House said that it was a “constitutional coup”. I did not quite hear him deny that he said it; perhaps he will get the chance again to tell the House—did he say that, or did he not? If it is a constitutional coup, what does it say about the sovereignty that he claims and his claim that this place is little more than some sort of tin-pot dictatorship?

It was, of course, the Leader of the House who led the “Prorogue Three”—the three Privy Councillors who travelled to Balmoral to ask the Queen to act unlawfully in an attempt to draw the monarch into their half-baked scheme. If he will not apologise for the Prorogation of Parliament, will he now apologise to Her Majesty the Queen for attempting to draw her into this sorry state of affairs? I am trying to use measured language, Mr Speaker, but he has simply probably been the least successful Leader of the House since the post was created. He has lost every vote in the House. He has lost the Government their majority. He cannot even get the election the Prime Minister craves. His Prorogation was unlawful. He is supposed to be the smartest cookie in the no-deal Brexit cult coup. If that is the best they have got, Mr Speaker, God help the rest of them.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Mr Speaker, I am afraid that your successor will have an uphill task. Moderate language lasted precisely 21 minutes before the hon. Gentleman got up and managed to reduce the tone. He said that being here would be the last thing that I would want to be, but actually, Mr Speaker, I share one thing with you: there is nothing I like more than being in the House of Commons, other than speaking in the House of Commons. I think I compete with you for how much I enjoy speaking, but I think that we get a similar pleasure. I am therefore delighted to be here. I would point out in response to the hon. Gentleman, in relation to the recess motion, that the court itself pointed out that there was a huge difference between a recess and a Prorogation, so it is therefore completely in accord with and in the spirit of the judgment the court came to.