Business of the House

Peter Grant Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I know that the hon. Gentleman has suffered personally from skin cancer and I reinforce what he is trying to do to ensure that more people know about it, so there is greater awareness and so that treatment can be faster and quicker. I therefore think it is a very suitable subject for debate, because Westminster Hall debates do have the effect of raising awareness, and I wish him extraordinarily well both in his personal health and in this campaign. However, he knows procedures of the House better than I do, and he is aware that Westminster Hall debates and Adjournment debates are organised, assuming the House is sitting, before recess motions are taken, and that they then get changed. Government business in Government time is not announced unless a recess motion has been either not taken or sorted out. So it is routine for Westminster Hall to have an announcement for next Tuesday, regardless of tomorrow’s motion.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

May I reveal to the House that the Leader of the House unintentionally learned some guid Scots words more than 20 years ago when he was knocking doors in my constituency, and that what he referred to was not a constitutional coup but a constitutional cowp, which I think well describes the position the Government have got us into. May I ask him, even at this late stage, to think again about the necessity to close down Parliament in order for the Conservative party to have its annual conference? I do not think anybody is suggesting that it should be cancelled, because it has been pointed out that that would have serious economic implications for Manchester, among other things, but this will be the fifth year in succession that members of the Scottish National party in this House have had successfully to manage the fact that we are expected to be here as Members of Parliament at the same time as our party members want us to be at our party conference. This year, the conference is in Aberdeen, which is more or less twice as far from here as Manchester is. The Queen’s Speech is right in the middle of our conference, yet we will manage that. My right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) has had to make some extraordinarily difficult and tortuous journeys to combine both duties. If 35 SNP Members can manage that every year, surely almost 300 Conservative MPs can manage it just this once. Let the conference go ahead, but let us have Members of Parliament in the House doing the job they have been elected to do.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman reminds everybody that I stood in his constituency many years ago, in1997. Standing in Glenrothes was a great honour and privilege, and the people of his constituency are fantastic people—[Interruption.] They did not vote for me, but that is a separate matter. That does not stop them being good people. I am not so exclusive in my view of good people. I was very touched on becoming Lord President of the Council to get a letter of congratulation from Elizabeth Scott, who in 1997 was chairman of the Conservative Association in Glenrothes—a small but perfectly formed Conservative Association.

I am very conscious of the point that the hon. Gentleman makes. It is a long-standing problem that the SNP conference takes place when the House is sitting. What I would say to him in relation to the Conservative party conference is that we have had no notice of this change, whereas the SNP was aware when booking its conference that the House would be sitting. I therefore do not think that the two are exactly comparable, but I am certainly sympathetic to the situation that he and his party find themselves in.