Committee on Standards: Decision of the House

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2021 Commons Chamber

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

As always, it is a privilege and a pleasure to follow the Father of the House. I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) on securing this important debate. She introduced it in a means and a manner significantly different from what we had last week, and I welcome her comments.

What a few days this has been. What a week we have had to endure as politicians who serve in this House. Our politics has been taken to a very dark place indeed, with the sense that rules have been torn up and the feeling that we have returned to the worst days of Tory sleaze—sleaze that we thought had been buried and was gone, never to return. There is a sense of outrage among the public that I have never seen in the 20 years that I have been in this place. That is palpable and tangible in our bulging email boxes, with angry constituents demanding to know what an earth is going on, and demanding that we put it right and sort this mess out.

One has to ask, what on earth were the Government thinking of? What were they trying to achieve? What did they want to do? What did they think was going to happen, introducing that motion the way they did? I almost feel sorry for the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. If there was a short straw for turning up to try to defend this Government’s action, he most certainly picked it today. It should be his right hon. Friend the Leader of the House leading this debate. It was him that brought that grubby motion to the House last Wednesday, it was him that defended it to the hilt, and it was him that took up nearly half the time that we were allowed to have that debate. He should be standing at the Dispatch Box today defending the Government’s action and telling us what he is going to do. He always likes to remind me of battles past; today, he is like the brave Sir Robin from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, bravely running away from doing his duty at the Dispatch Box.

We know that this was a plot hatched between the Leader of the House and his right hon. Friend the Government Chief Whip, designed, approved and orchestrated through No. 10, with the weight of the whipping operation that we saw last Wednesday. This goes all the way to the very top. What the two of them did was open the Tory Pandora’s box marked “sleaze”—and what a grubby, rotten receptacle it has turned out to be. They are a Government prepared to reinvent the rules if they do not like them—a Government so arrogant and entitled that they believe they can get away with whatever they want.

[Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend mentions the Pandora’s box of sleaze. He will be familiar with the corruption allegations that appeared in The Sunday Times yesterday following an investigation by openDemocracy. Does he not believe, as I do, that that is a matter not just for this House and for Parliament but for the police?

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because I want to get round to that particular case. I did note that yesterday. I was here for cash for honours mark 1; this is cash for honours mark 2.0, and I will refer to that specifically.

[Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

As the hon. Member is on the topic, does he not agree that another aspect that has created great anger and concern in our communities is the funding of political parties? Let us look particularly at the Russians and how they are funding the Conservative party: Lubov Chernukhin has given £2.1 million; Alexander Temerko—a part-owner of a company that is trying to build an underwater cable—has given £1.3 million; and Viktor Fedotov, who also owns that company, has given money to the Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma), the Minister for corporate social responsibility, the Secretary of State for International Trade and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Is this right?

[Pete Wishart]

That was a long intervention but a necessary one. The right hon. Lady is spot on. The way that donations have been going into the Tory party needs to be properly investigated, and I am going to suggest a way that that should be done.

We are on day six of this. For six days, it has dominated political discourse in our media, in the public and in our communities and our constituencies. Nobody—no Minister who has presided over something that goes on day after day—usually survives that. It shows no sign of abating or going away.

I do not know whether the public will accept the apology made by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; I suspect not. I do not think that was what the public wanted to hear. I do not think they were saying, “Yes, we want to hear this Government standing there saying, ‘Sorry, we’ve got this totally wrong.’” I think the public want to hear this Government being just that little bit more contrite and just that little bit more accommodating with the feeling and the sentiment out there in our constituencies. Our constituents are angry. Our constituents are fed up. I think the right hon. Gentleman has to do a little bit better than that.

[Wera Hobhouse]

We have established that the corrupt and bad behaviour of some MPs damages all of us, so does the hon. Gentleman agree that what is needed now is the commitment of every single Member to strengthen, rather than weaken, the standards process and the rules around it?

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right and spot on. That is exactly what is required. When I hear Conservative Members talking about reforming some of the rules and regulations to replace what we have in place, I am not hearing an attempt to strengthen them to make them better and more accountable. What I am hearing from them is, “Let’s weaken them. Let’s make sure that people can get off and get away with things. If we don’t like them, let’s rewrite them and do them all again.” That is what we are hearing from them.

I feel sorry for Conservative Back Benchers. The way they have been treated by the Government Front Bench almost approaches cruelty. They have been marched all the way to the top of the hill by the Leader of the House of Commons, the right hon. Member for North East Somerset—the grand old Duke of York—and marched all the way down again. They have not just been marched all the way down, however. They have been met with a barrage, a volley of bad constituents’ emails and the consternation of the people they represent. I feel sorry for the Conservative hon. Ladies and hon. Gentlemen here today for having to take that. I hope they know who is to blame for what they have to endure.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

Of course, this is not the first time we have seen this Prime Minister do things that have shocked our constituents. The last time I had a mailbag similar to this weekend’s was for the illegal Prorogation of Parliament a couple of years’ ago, which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) took to the Supreme Court and exposed. The level of outrage over that incident is similar to the level of outrage over this issue. The Government have learned nothing.

[Pete Wishart]

Absolutely. There are spikes of interest from our constituents about the business of this place and my hon. Friend is right to mention that one. That was a busy, busy week for Members of Parliament. The other one, of course, was Barnard Castle. I do not think we have quite reached the heights of Barnard Castle yet in terms of the response from the public, but we are getting very close. As this matter goes on and we find it unresolved, we will start to get into that territory.

I listened very carefully to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire. I sense he is not listening very carefully to me, but I listened very carefully to him and I still do not know the Government’s position. Maybe he could help us. I do not know if there is summing up today, but we need to hear from the Government about what they are going to do now. What I think I heard was that they are sorry for this mess. Fair enough, they are sorry for this mess. That’s great, we will accept their apology. But now tell us what you are going to do.

The motion setting up the kangaroo court committee of corruption is still in place. That is the policy of this House. We need to hear the Government say clearly that they are removing it, and are finding some means and method to ensure it is no longer a part of the business of the House. We need to hear them say that they are prepared to accept independent investigation and that they will support the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), the Chair of the Committee on Standards, and his Committee in doing its work. We need to hear them say that. We also need to hear them say that they are going back to that moment just before the Division Bell rang last Wednesday and back to the position we were in before any of this nonsense started.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

I have a concern about my hon. Friend’s proposition. Last week, regardless of whether one agreed with the amendment tabled by the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom), the Government utilised it as a motion of confidence in themselves. I therefore have no confidence, and I am sure my hon. Friend has no confidence, that any of this is going to change.

[Pete Wishart]

Absolutely. That is why we need clarity and we have to hear it today. The suggestion, I think from the Chair of the Committee, was that we need a motion to be tabled for tomorrow so that we can deal effectively with the former Member for North Shropshire. We have to have that before the House, so we are able to ensure our judgment is passed on what we believe are the consequences of his actions.

Another issue is the disgraceful attacks on the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. They were co-ordinated—there is absolutely no way we can get around that. They came from the top. They were directed. You do not attack the credibility of the Standards Commissioner by saying disrespectful things about her if you do not have the permission to do that and say that. What they had in mind was a softening-up exercise, because they know that the Prime Minister is going to be investigated again. They know that a number of issues still have to be resolved about his personal behaviour and conduct. I think the undermining and neutering of the Standards Committee was a deliberate process and it has to stop—it has to end.

For the Prime Minister, it is almost like a revolving door of investigation, whether it is for breaking the ministerial code, acting unlawfully or soliciting dodgy donations for luxury holidays and home refurbishments. One thing we can commit to today is saying that this House has full faith and trust in our Standards Commissioner and that we will allow her to do her job. The undermining and disgraceful attacks must now end.

But the true shocker of the past couple of days is cash for honours 2.0. I really did not think, following Tony Blair being questioned under caution by the Metropolitan police 15 years ago, that we would be back to this place so quickly. It was only a couple of Parliaments ago that Tony Blair had to face questions about donations and the House of Lords. The only difference that I have seen in the course of the past couple of decades is that the price to get into the House of Lords has gone up from £1 million under new Labour to £3 million under the Conservatives. There is Tory inflation for you.

It now seems that nearly all the past treasurers of the Conservative party of later years are in that place, wearing their ermine and taking part in the legislative decisions of this country. The only characteristic they seem to have—the only defining feature that seems to get them a place in that House—is that they are able to give several million pounds to the Government. The Environment Secretary said yesterday that they were in the Lords for their philanthropy. I think the public will probably assess that the accounts of the Conservative party are just about the worst and least deserving good cause that there is in this land.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful point. Does he think that it is a coincidence that the 22 largest donors to the Conservative party now hold peerages and sit in the House of Lords?

[Pete Wishart]

I do not, I have to say, because I think that place is just so corrupted. It is a receptacle in this place for donors to either of the big parties, and I have to include the Liberals in that, too, because some of their activities around the House of Lords are just as bad as those of the two main parties.

What I have done today is ask the Metropolitan police to investigate these appointments under the provisions of section 1(2) of the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925. That Act states:

“If any person gives, or agrees or proposes to give, or offers to any person any gift, money or valuable consideration as an inducement or reward for procuring or assisting or endeavouring to procure the grant of a dignity or title of honour to any person, or otherwise in connection with such a grant, he shall be guilty of a misdemeanour”.

I have now asked the Metropolitan police to investigate the activities of the Conservative party and the awarding of places in the House of Lords.

I will say ever so gently to my friends in the Labour party: stop putting people in that place. Stop giving it legitimacy and credibility. We do not need a Gordon Brown commission. We just need you guys as the Opposition party to say that you will abolish it. It is a corrupt circus, and it is the high point of deference in the class system. To think that a Labour party would defend that place and put people in it is beyond ridiculous. Grow up, get a sense of this and help us get rid of that appalling circus down the corridor.

Last week, the Tories royally cocked up and have had to beat an embarrassing, hasty retreat. Their next move might now define the rest of their parliamentary term. Accept this. They have to do more than apologise. They have to show contrition. They have to show that they really mean this. That is the task and job for this Conservative Government. They have to take us back to the point before the Division bell rang last Wednesday. We do not want to “reform” the standards process; we want it to continue its work, but nothing will happen until we get back to that point. They must stop rewarding donors with places in the House of Lords. It is now up to them to show the contrition that the public want, show that they are really sorry, and get us back to where we were.