Committee on Standards

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

It is not true that all the posts are elected. The Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, for example, is not elected. The hon. Gentleman, who is on the Procedure Committee, really ought to know better and know the details of the composition of Select Committees of this House.

I shall turn briefly to a letter sent to me yesterday by union representatives about the importance—

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

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. We only have an hour and a half to discuss this. This is the time that the Government gave us to discuss this matter. There is huge interest in this debate. Is there anything that you can do to encourage the Leader of the House to wind up his remarks?

[Mr Speaker]

I think the Leader of the House has just said that he is coming to his conclusion.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a real pleasure to follow the Father of the House, who offers some realistic and sage advice about how we take forward processes and business such as this. It would be good if the Leader of the House was to listen to his very straightforward comments about what is going on today.

When I was first told about this, I thought it was some sort of joke. I thought, “They can’t possibly be serious.” I expected maybe to come to a debate that would be the usual suspects speaking on behalf of one of their pals—but not today. Today we have the full force of the Government whipping operation dragooning Conservative Members of Parliament through this House to overturn the decision of our Standards Committee and to introduce a new way of examining breaches of the rules in this House. It is an almost outrageous suggestion.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way on the Government’s approach: seeking to introduce mechanisms to neutralise court rulings of the Supreme Court, seeking to defy the European convention on human rights, seeking to reform the Electoral Commission, and now this. Does he, like me and I am sure many others on the Opposition Benches, agree with the litany of Giovanni Capoccia that this is a dire warning of the pillars of democracy being undermined by the Conservative and Unionist party for its own nefarious needs?

[Pete Wishart]

Yes, I do. I say to my hon. Friend and to this House: the public are watching this. The public are examining how we do this type of business, and, I say ever so gently to my Conservative colleagues over there, they are not liking what they are seeing. They are extremely concerned about the way that this House is going when it considers some of these issues.

What the public are observing is a shoddy attempt to turn back the clock to the worst excesses of 1990s Tory sleaze. What they see is the return of the days of brown envelopes and cash for questions—the absolute worst of sleaze and cronyism. What they see is the Conservatives trying to get one of their mates off the hook by ignoring independent due process, and rewriting the rules because they do not suit them, to close down an independent process and replace it with a Committee of this House with a Conservative majority and a Conservative Chair. Let us get rid of all independent process and just have them adjudicate on everything. Why do we not get the executive committee of the 1922 Committee to replace the whole of the judicial system across the UK? If a Conservative supporter is found guilty of any offence, why do we not get a committee set up to reconsider that verdict and have a look at it once again? That is the type of realm of possibility we are getting into with this.

I do not care if this place seems as sleaze-ridden and crony-ridden as it wants to be. In fact, it does me good if people from Scotland are watching and observing this place descending into the midden that we know it can become. It serves my purpose to see it do that. But is that what the Conservatives want to do with this House—to so debase and degrade the way that we do things that the public will start to look on this place with nothing other than utter contempt?

Let us just remind ourselves about what the Standards Committee found. It found that the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) broke multiple rules when he lobbied the Government on behalf of Randox and Lynn’s Country Foods. The Committee’s report said:

“No previous case of paid advocacy has seen so many breaches or such a clear pattern of behaviour in failing to separate private and public interests.”

It quite rightly imposed the maximum sanction available to it. What the Conservatives now want to do is to overthrow that verdict of this independent Committee and to have the matter determined by a Committee with a Conservative Chair and a Conservative majority. That is natural justice Conservative-style for you. Can I say this to you, Mr Speaker? This Committee is supposed to have a Conservative Chair, four other Conservative members, three Labour members and one Scottish National party member, but the Scottish National party will not serve on any kangaroo court designed and determined by the Conservative party in order to do away with an independent process for looking at a breach of the rules.

God know what Kathryn Stone must be making of this. She has every right and every entitlement to walk right away from all this and have nothing further to do with this House that now attempts to change the rules midway through the process. The shadow Leader of the House is absolutely right. We were only told a couple of weeks ago that we could not change the rules retrospectively, but here we are in the middle of considering a standards report, and that is exactly what we are doing. What a way to do our business. What a shoddy return to the days of Tory sleaze. What a way to reduce this House into the absolute shambles that it is.

Today, Tory MPs are being instructed by their Whips to vote for this. We are doing this without any scrutiny or consideration of how these rules are rewritten. If the Leader of the House wants us to look at how we approach these things in future, he should bring forward a debate, not just 90 minutes where he took up half the time, because nobody has an opportunity to get in and say anything. Do it properly. Why are we doing this when we are considering a standards report? We will not take our place on this Committee; we will have nothing to do with it. I hope that Labour Members do not take their places on it either. If the Conservatives want to be the judge and jury and the arbitrator in all this, that is up to them. Get on and do it; we will have absolutely nothing to do with this process at all.