Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill: Section 35 Power

Debate between Pete Wishart and Stephen Flynn

Tuesday 17th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Flynn]

Absolutely. It appears that Mark Drakeford has more of a backbone than the vast majority of those in the parliamentary Labour party put together, and they could do well to learn from his views in that respect.

Democracy matters, and this UK Government are consistently seeking to ignore Scotland’s democracy. I mentioned the right to strike and the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill, but it is also true of Brexit as a whole in that 72% of Scots want to rejoin the European Union, yet the UK Government and indeed the Labour party have absolutely no interest in that position whatsoever.

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

I know my hon. Friend has not had an opportunity to look at the statement of reasons, some 57 paragraphs of which have just been served up to us. I have had a chance to have a quick look at it, and maybe my hon. Friend should not bother doing so in any great degree detail because it is specious, hypothetical and poorly informed. One example is that, on equal pay, the Government seem to believe that a trans man would take advantage of the opportunity to be paid less. That is the type of rubbish included in this. What does he think of that?

[Stephen Flynn]

I have obviously not had the opportunity to look at it, but if that is the case it is a complete and utter embarrassment. It shows that, just as the Secretary of State was unprepared today on this matter, so too are his Government on the arguments they are putting forward. I am a little bit embarrassed for them in that regard.

Strengthening Standards in Public Life

Debate between Pete Wishart and Stephen Flynn

Wednesday 17th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[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.

Committee on Standards: Decision of the House

Debate between Pete Wishart and Stephen Flynn

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.