Business of the House

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Thursday 23rd September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Mr Speaker,

“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you”.

I have done what my hon. Friend asks before he asked for it—before he rose to his feet—because on Monday 25 October there will be the Second Reading of the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill, which will be an opportunity for him to raise those important points. We also have the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill, which is in their lordships’ House and will come back to us in due course. The Government are very committed to following many of the policies that my hon. Friend has suggested.

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

I join in the tributes to Mark Kelly. When I was Chief Whip of our group and the representative of all the minority parties, Mark Kelly gave us nothing but kindness and great advice. I am sure that he will be sorely missed. I congratulate Rob Foot, who I know will be missed in the Office of the Leader of the House.

Here we are, barely back, and we are just about to take another break so that we can participate in the proceedings of voluntary organisations of which we just so happen to be a member. We will be taking a month off when the UK is facing an autumn of discontent and when hard-pressed families are facing one of the biggest assaults on their weekly income. As this House abandons its station to go to the conference hall and seaside resorts, there are universal credit cuts, energy prices going through the roof, a carbon dioxide crisis, driver shortages, farming chaos, fishing chaos, export prices, the ending of furlough and a Brexit killing a nation. This nonsense of a conference recess has surely run its course and must now come to an end.

We also face an environment crisis, but hey, we have the Prime Minister telling us all to grow up as he quotes Kermit the Frog. Maybe he should have got Kermit the Frog to negotiate a trade deal with the Americans while he was there—maybe we could even get Fozzie Bear to solve the energy crisis. How dare anybody even start to refer to them as a bunch of Muppets?

I know now that there is absolutely nothing that will encourage Conservative Members to take the safety of their colleagues seriously in this House. Their pathetic defiance in refusing to wear a face mask is almost like a pathological childishness. When we come back, will the Leader of the House agree to a meeting with all parties and your good self, Mr Speaker, so that we can agree a joint approach to safety in this workplace and so that at least we do not have the ridiculous spectacle of a House divided by face masks, where Conservative Members defiantly do not wear one but everybody on our side of the House does?

Lastly, may I wish you a good conference recess, Mr Speaker? I do not know whether there is a UK Speakers’ party in which you might be the Chair. I also want to say to the Leader of the House as he goes off that I just hope Sir Toffalot here will manage to find a face mask on his way to Manchester.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

There was a Speakers conference: an enormously successful conference of the G7, which was held in your constituency of Chorley, Mr Speaker, and included very significant Speakers, including Nancy Pelosi from the United States. I think that the hon. Gentleman was intending to congratulate you on a successful conference there. Otherwise I am slightly puzzled by his geography, because I was unaware that Manchester was a seaside resort, but perhaps he knows something that I do not.

As is now becoming traditional, I thought that I would give the hon. Gentleman a date that I discovered from The Times this morning: it is the anniversary of the battle of Salamis in 480 BC, when the Athenians beat the Persians and Xerxes was defeated. I am sure that that will be of interest to the hon. Gentleman, although it is quite hard to see how it relates to Scottish independence.

As regards the question of wearing masks, I do not know whether you are a reader of tabloid newspapers, Mr Speaker, but a certain very senior figure in the socialist party was photographed travelling on a train without a face mask. I do wonder whether there is one rule when the cameras are on and everybody is under vision, and another when people are on railway trains not expecting to be snapped.