Business of the House

Peter Aldous Excerpts

Thursday 4th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

That was what I said in my statement at the beginning. We wanted to proceed on a cross-party basis and clearly, therefore, the Select Committee not being supported by other parties was not going to be an effective way of doing that. We had a debate on standards yesterday, which took up 90 minutes and was quite comprehensive.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

With regard to yesterday’s amendment to the Standards Committee’s motion and my right hon. Friend’s statements this morning, both initially and in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), I welcome this move, but I emphasise the need to move very, very quickly for cross-party involvement and to allay the concerns that have already been expressed by members of the public. Our credibility is destroyed if we do not nip this in the bud very, very quickly.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I think we have moved quickly. We recognise that not achieving cross-party support yesterday made it very difficult to get the reforms that we are seeking. We do still seek to have a system that is properly fair and allows a genuine form of appeal, but that cannot be done by the fiat of the Government. It needs broader support than that.