Conduct of the Right Hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip

Debate between Pete Wishart and Martin Docherty-Hughes

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

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

This has been some debate. I have to say at the outset that I did not think our modest little motion would trigger Tory Back Benchers in the way it has done. There have been some amazing speeches in response to what we put forward, in a very reasonable motion about the behaviour and conduct of the Prime Minister. I wish to discuss their speeches, because some of them were truly fascinating and I want to go into some of the details.

First, however, I wish to congratulate my colleagues on some outstanding contributions. My right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) was absolutely right to highlight and list that litany of sleaze and corruption. He reminded us of the Nolan principles of public life. He was right to use the “L” word. I have been 20 years in this House and it has not become commonplace for that to be used here, but today it is the only word that is appropriate—no other alternatives can be found. It is the only way we can describe some of the Prime Minister’s conduct. The Chairman of Ways and Means was absolutely right to make her ruling today because there is no other way to describe what the Prime Minister has said to this House. I am reluctant to use the word, as I have been in this House so long, but lie it is.

There were some great speeches from my right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie); from my hon. Friends the Members for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Steven Bonnar) and for Airdrie and Shotts (Ms Qaisar); from my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson)—that was a fantastic speech; from my hon. Friends the Members for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows), for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) and for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown); from my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn), whose toddler I would rather have addressing the CBI than the Prime Minister any day; from my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson); and from the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts).

Then there were the Conservative speeches. Well, Madam Deputy Speaker, where do you start? First, Conservative Members come here and tell us that we should not be debating this motion and should be debating something else. They said exactly the same thing the previous time we had an Opposition day. Perhaps we should ask the Leader of the House for permission and to tell us exactly what we should debate on our own Opposition days. What a hard neck Conservative Members have: they pockled half a day from our Opposition day so that they could discuss the wearing of face masks in England. If they do not know what pockled means, let me tell them: it means misappropriating, taking away and stealing, which is exactly what they did today.

I thought we were doing Conservative Members a favour: I thought they would all be queuing up and jumping over each other to get to their feet to defend the Prime Minister and tell us what a wonderful character he was, about all his attributes, that he was the most honest man in the world and that he was corruption and sleaze-free. But none of them did it—not one. [Interruption.] There was one, and I think somebody else might have mentioned just how valuable the Prime Minister is to them, but none of the rest of the Conservative Members were even going to prepare to start to defend their Prime Minister. They wanted to talk about absolutely everything other than what the motion is about. They tried to get us to talk about everything else other than the motion, but let me tell them that although they think it is unimportant, it will be their downfall.

Conservative Members actually believe their own rhetoric and that nobody cares about Tory sleaze and corruption, but it is all anybody is talking about. Why do they think their opinion poll rating has dropped by something up to eight percentage points? It is not because the SNP is not debating education or health; it is because Conservative Members are mired in a sleaze and corruption scandal on the scale of those in the 1990s. That is the reality of what people are discussing the length and breadth of the country and that is why their ratings are falling.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

rose—

[Pete Wishart]

This is the only time I am giving way.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. The Intelligence and Security Committee stated recently:

“Russian influence in the UK is the new normal. Successive Governments have welcomed the oligarchs and their money with open arms, providing them with a means of recycling illicit finance”

and with

“connections…to UK companies and political figures.”

That is corruption at the heart of the British Government, is it not?

Strengthening Standards in Public Life

Debate between Pete Wishart and Martin Docherty-Hughes

Wednesday 17th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[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.

Committee on Standards: Decision of the House

Debate between Pete Wishart and Martin Docherty-Hughes

Monday 8th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[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.

Committee on Standards

Debate between Pete Wishart and Martin Docherty-Hughes

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[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.

Nomination of Members to Committees

Debate between Pete Wishart and Martin Docherty-Hughes

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

The Government will pass this tonight; they will get their way because they have the DUP in their £1 billion pocket, but that does not make it right or democratic. They have 48.7% of the membership of the House; they should not have any more than that proportion in terms of Committees.

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

The hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) talks about democracy, but it would seem that democracy in this place cost £1.5 billion, and we face probably the greatest constitutional crisis that these islands have seen since 1922. We might also reflect on 1974, but if we really want to get a grip on the notion of how Committees are selected, we need to live with the present experience, not that of 1974, and face the constitutional crisis that we have today.

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I want to move on to what happened in the 1970s, because it is very instructive and there are real lessons that the House could learn from that experience.

We now know why this Government have been so lax in putting together the normal functioning arrangements of the House. I raised this matter on the day we came back to Parliament, and I always feared that we would reach the stage when a motion such as this would be presented to the House. All this nonsense about Select Committees and why they were delayed was mere collateral damage resulting from the Government’s intention to control the legislative Committees. Now, at last, the rest of the House and the media are alert to the dangerous path that this Government are taking us down.

This House is determined by parliamentary arithmetic, and the day that we play fast and loose with that arithmetic and the verdict of the British people is the day that we start to walk down a murky, anti-democratic path. Our membership of the Select Committees is based on the number of Members that we secure. That allows us our membership on Select Committees, and it allows for our speaking rights and for all the other arrangements. These orders do not reflect the numbers of the House. We know that because the Clerks were charged with coming up with the formulae that allowed us to determine the Committees of the House. When it came to the Select Committees, the Clerks went away and crunched the numbers and then came back and presented the results to the parties. It was expected that there would be five Conservative members, five Labour members and one from the other parties, and everybody accepted that because it reflected the arithmetic of the House.

The Clerks also said that the Government should not have a majority on Standing Committees because they do not have a majority in this House. When it came to even-numbered Committees, they agreed with the Government that there should be no majority. That was fine, and everybody agrees with that. The Clerks did the numbers and the Government accept that. For Committees with an odd number of members, however, the Clerks said that there should be an Opposition majority. Remarkably, according to the Clerks, the Government only have a majority on Committees of 13 members. If we disregard the information supplied by the Clerks of this House—the people responsible for arranging the arithmetic, crunching the numbers and coming up with the formulae—we are again entering some seriously dangerous territory.