Strengthening Standards in Public Life

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2021 Commons Chamber

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

It is great to follow the Leader of the House. I do not often get the opportunity to follow him in a debate in the House, so it is good to see him in his place and in such fine fettle and a reasonably good mood, after the difficult and torrid time he had at the Dispatch Box yesterday. It is good to see him back here today, taking up his responsibilities as Leader of the House, and coming here and fronting the important debate we are holding today.

Today is an auspicious day. Today we mark the two-week anniversary of this new age of Tory sleaze, and the not-so-glorious era of Tory chaos on standards and behaviour—a period in our political history that will now never be forgotten. Like all great historical epochs, it has its heroes and villains in the people who have defined it. Most notably among them is, of course, the Leader of the House himself. Then we have the Government Chief Whip, and it was all masterminded, organised and administered by the chief of staff of this organisation, the Prime Minister himself. This is the troika of standards misery; the holy trinity of standing up for your pal when the going gets tough.

Then there are the winners. We know who the winners are, as there are quite a lot of them. They have made an absolute fortune out of those second jobs. Good on them—they are the winners. Then there are the losers and the victims, and I am trying to think generally about who those people might be. The victims, I think, are those who believe in propriety, and those who want our politics to be beyond reproach. Surprisingly, among the victims in all this I look to the Tory Back Benchers, who have been dragged up that hill by the dysfunctional Grand Old Duke of York, only to be marched all the way down again. Then, when they thought they had got to the bottom, they were dragged further into the ground by their Prime Minister. They have every right to be upset with their hard Brexiteer colleagues who are running this Government, and I am sure they never signed up to be part of a House that is so singularly loathed by the people they represent. Day after day, the headlines keep coming. Yesterday’s were quite amusing. They all involved the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, who seems to have been levelling up on his obligations to his good friend and leadership donor, David Meller, who he put in the VIP lane for £160 million of PPE contracts.

Today our attention and focus has turned to the concept of second jobs, and in their traditional, good-natured way the Government seem to want to make an absolute and utter hash of it. I think we have a good idea of what the public want when it comes to MPs’ second jobs. They want to be absolutely satisfied that no Member of Parliament is profiteering from their position as an MP. They want to know that their MP is dedicated exclusively to them, working full time in their interests and that they are their only concern. They most definitely do not want to see Members of Parliament earning the eye-watering, obscene figures that some have earned doing second jobs. They actually believe that we are handsomely paid. Most members of the public probably think that we are paid far too much for what we do. I am sure that if we were to ask them, they would be all in favour of reducing our salaries. They certainly do not believe that we need a second job to supplement the more than generous salaries that we receive for doing our important work.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

The hon. Member is making a powerful point about second salaries. It was announced today that we have record inflation, at a time when we already have a cost of living crisis and rising energy bills, so does he agree that the fact that we are arguing over the fine print of whether or not MPs can earn more money does us no credit whatsoever, and that cross-party consensus would be best served by backing the Opposition motion?

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Lady will not be surprised to hear me say that I wholeheartedly agree with her. We have a cost of living crisis and it was announced today that inflation is going through the roof, yet we are here debating our income and going over whether we think it is right and appropriate for MPs to earn even more than the very generous salaries that we already get for looking after constituents.

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

People will know that, as a breast cancer surgeon, I have practised in the past while trying to maintain my licence. I remember being pilloried on the front of the Daily Mail for helping out over Christmas when my colleague had a heart attack. I have no issue with second jobs being regulated, whether by time, money or whatever way the House chooses, but is this not being used as a smokescreen? The issue that was raised at the beginning of this month was not about a second job. It was about corruption, selling influence, selling contracts and selling peerages—and second jobs is being used as a cover for that.

[Pete Wishart]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, who gets right to the heart of the matter. This is nothing but a smokescreen from the Government, who have thrown this out here to try to excuse their appalling behaviour over the past couple of weeks. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend. She is right. She is a distinguished breast cancer surgeon and the way in which she was traduced, with the assistance of the Conservative party, for doing her job, helping out and doing that work for nothing was absolutely and utterly appalling. They should be ashamed of themselves for what they did.

[Stephen Flynn]

On the topic of corruption, the Leader of the House mentioned Edmund Burke earlier. We might want to reflect on another quote by Edmund Burke:

“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”

[Pete Wishart]

I will leave that with my hon. Friend: it is a fantastic quote and I am glad that he has presented it to the House.

Today we are debating a Labour motion and a Government amendment. We have no problem with supporting the Labour motion. We will vote in favour of it, if we get the opportunity to do so. We are happy to leave it to the Committee on Standards in Public Life. We applaud it for the work that it has already put in, and the House looks forward to receiving the decision as soon as possible and to backing it in its important work.

Then we come to the Government amendment. My hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) is absolutely right: this is nothing but a fig leaf, a cover up, to try to divert attention and get away from the real issues, including the Prime Minister’s private flat, his villa in wherever it is in Spain and the propriety of so many Members of Parliament. I did not even understand most of what the Leader of the House was trying to explain. If he left it just as: they would do as the Committee on Standards in Public Life suggests, that would be absolutely fine, but it seems like they want to direct the Committee on Standards in Public Life. They want to lead it into certain directions and they want to suggest to it what it should do as part of its work. I think the Chair of the Committee on Standards was absolutely right. It should be left to the Committee to determine and decide. They do not need the Government’s prompting to get these issues resolved. Let us leave it with them. It is a cross-party Committee. It is a Committee that is well chaired by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who is very studious and diligent about his work.

Today—this, I think, gets to the heart of it—the hapless International Trade Secretary, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan), was sent out. Somebody gets the short straw every morning and today it was the International Trade Secretary. She could not even make up her mind how many hours we should all get to work on our second jobs. I think it was initially 10 to 15 hours. Then she suggested, I think it was in the Radio 4 interview, that it was up to 20 hours. They cannot even decide among themselves for how many hours they should get to do their second jobs.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Pete Wishart]

Oh, yes. I usually eat Tory Back Benchers for breakfast, but I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Andy Carter]

I am very grateful. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am a member of the Standards Committee and I just want to clarify something he mentioned earlier. He was talking about the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which is a different committee to the Committee on Standards in this House. I think he was confusing the two. I just think it is important. The Committee on Standards in Public Life is an independent committee not associated with this House.

[Pete Wishart]

I am fully aware of what the two different and distinct committees are. What we want to do is ensure that we get the opportunity to back the recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. That is what we are looking forward to doing.

Just briefly, Madam Deputy Speaker, to remind ourselves of the scale of this problem and issue when it comes to second jobs, The Sunday Times showed us that 138 MPs have had second jobs in the past year and that 12 earn at least an extra £100,000 a year from outside interests. Almost one in four Tory MPs spends at least 100 hours a year on second jobs and 25 MPs spend more than 416 hours a year.

We in the Scottish National party believe that our job as a Member of Parliament must be an exclusive commitment to our constituents. We also want to see all of Parliament included. That includes that rotten corrupt circus down that corridor there. The House of Lords has to be included in this. I welcome the valiant efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) to try to get the issue looked at again—his amendment was not selected—and all my other colleagues who have been trying to press this issue. It cannot and can never be right that someone can be rewarded with a place in the House of Lords for giving £3 million to the coffers of the Tory party. It is a measure that would make a tin-pot dictator in a banana republic blush, with the size and amount of sleaze and scandal.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

Does my hon. Friend agree that with the Government backpedalling on the previous notion of a new committee, we need to ensure that cross-party support for the present Committee also goes to the upper Chamber, where we stop appointing Members from the Opposition to an unelected, unaccountable House of Lords?

[Pete Wishart]

Absolutely. We have a duty, an obligation and a responsibility to make sure we have the best possible standards in the unelected Chamber. It is the Prime Minister who appoints Members to the House of Lords. It is lists drawn up by party leaders that give those appointments an opportunity to be placed there. That has to stop. I know this House likes the place up there for some reason, watching people dressed up like Santa Claus prance around the place, but they are put there because they are donors, cronies or placemen. It is an appalling abuse, a corrupt House, and we should be looking at abolishing it, not putting more people in because they happen to give the Tory party £3 million.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and congratulate him on a stunning speech, as ever, on this issue. Does he agree that it is long past time since we banned the practice of Members who have been rejected at the ballot box paying their way into an upper Chamber? Does he agree that in an independent Scotland there will be no unelected upper Chamber and that all members of our legislature will be democratically elected?

[Pete Wishart]

I agree absolutely and utterly. There is no place in any democratic system for people who are put there by a Prime Minister just because they happened to give his party £3 million. We would never accept that in an independent Scotland.

That brings me to my next point—I am grateful to my hon. Friend—because the people of Scotland are observing this and they do not like what they are seeing. It is just making them more determined that we get away from this sleazy, corrupt, rotten cesspit of a place and start to be self-governing in our nation of Scotland. They are embarrassed by this place and, unfortunately, Scotland has not been left unscathed by the behaviour of Members of Parliament.

[Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

If the hon. Gentleman really believes that this place is a cesspit, he should just leave. Leave with your Members—[Interruption.] No, seriously, leave—give up your jobs and go. To call this place that does so much good—Members on both sides of the House, including on the SNP Benches—a cesspit is an appalling thing to do.

[Pete Wishart]

I am really pleased that I gave way to the hon. Gentleman, because he could assist us in doing that. I know that we are an irritant to him and that he cannot stand us—we in the Scottish National party who speak up for our nation—but there is an easy, elegant, neat solution: you govern yourselves and we will govern ourselves.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order.

[Pete Wishart]

I am sorry—not you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I know that you govern yourself very effectively, but they can govern themselves in all their corrupt, sleazy beauty while we could get on with running a proper, democratic, accountable Scottish Parliament in an independent Scotland. That is the answer to what the hon. Gentleman said.

[Christine Jardine]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Pete Wishart]

I will not—I have given way to the hon. Lady and I have to get on.

We have a real issue with the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross), because he has the very definition of a second job, being both a Member of this House and a Member of the Scottish Parliament. He also has the added complication that he is a part-time assistant referee. His difficulties have only been compounded, and it gives me no pleasure to say this, because he did not properly declare the considerable sum—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I do hope that the hon. Gentleman has given notice that he intends to talk about another Member in his speech.

[Pete Wishart]

I most definitely did, Madam Deputy Speaker. I assure you that I would never mention an hon. Member without giving them notice in advance that I intended to raise the issue.

The hon. Member for Moray has the very definition of a second job. It is simply impossible for him to give his full attention to his constituents as their MP—as the Prime Minister now demands from Conservative MPs—when he needs to be in the Scottish Parliament as the leader of the Scottish Conservatives.

Let me give an example: the good people of Moray were not represented in the Finance Bill vote last night. The hon. Gentleman simply was not here. He had to be some place else, quite legitimately, in another job. He has to decide—on the strictures of the Prime Minister, who said this—whether he can be a full-time Member of Parliament and represent his constituents full time in this House or be the leader of the Scottish Conservatives in the Scottish Parliament. He cannot do both. He is not here now—I know he is probably in the Scottish Parliament; he might not be, but he has First Minister’s questions tomorrow when he will have to be there—but I say him to him very candidly that he should decide which Parliament he wants to be part of, because it is quite clear that he cannot do both, and I think his Prime Minister recognises that.

[Stewart Hosie]

This is in the public domain, Madam Deputy Speaker: if we look at the Leader of the House’s entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, we see that, in 2016, he has an entry for January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August and September. How much he earned does not matter, but he claims that he worked 35 hours in each of those months. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) believe that it is possible to be a full-time MP and find an extra week’s worth of work time every month for a second job?

[Pete Wishart]

The short answer is that I do not believe that that is possible. My right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) has been a colleague of mine for 15 years in this House, and I know the hours that he puts in to make sure that the good people of Dundee are represented in this place. He would never be able to find those hours, so I do not know how the Leader of the House was able to.

We also have to turn, ever so briefly, to something else that is going on in Scottish politics and deeply concerns me: dark money and the use of unincorporated associations to give money directly into the coffers of the Scottish Conservatives. We do not know much about those unincorporated associations; sometimes we are given an email address, a telephone number or even the name of a building, but we have absolutely no idea where their income comes from or how they are able to funnel it into the coffers of the Scottish Conservatives. It is a disgrace that they can continue doing so. We must get on with fixing that.

In my 20 years in this place, I think I have spoken in every debate on second jobs and standards in this House. As you will remember, Madam Deputy Speaker, we looked at the matter most recently in February 2015 when there was a scandal about a sting operation involving Jack Straw and Malcolm Rifkind. We all got together like this, we all spoke ever so highly and in detail about what we should do to address the problem, and we declared that we would do something about it. Is it not sad that we are back here seven years later saying the same things, determined to try to clean this place up?

We should not have to be here again. We should have had this dealt with. We are going through a terrible, terrible period in our politics just now. It is down to Conservative Members: the resolution lies with them. Back the Labour motion and throw out this stupid amendment.

[Several hon. Members rose—]