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

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Largan (High Peak) (Con)]

I was not planning to contribute to the debate, but the hon. Lady has been talking about conflicts of interest and timely waits, and she also said earlier in her speech that when the Labour party sees people breaking the rules, it acts. I have written to the hon. Lady twice, and I have written to the Leader of the Opposition a number of times over the last few months, about her former flatmate Ruth George, who has an atrocious record when it comes to anti-Jewish racism. It was she who said, when Luciana Berger quit the Labour party, that she and other members of her group were funded by Israel. Will the hon. Lady respond now to that conflict of interest, and agree that she should not be in the Labour party any more?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman must resume his seat. He should not be attacking personally in that way.

[Anneliese Dodds]

Just for the record, as the hon. Member stated in his own letter, those issues have been taken up and dealt with. [Interruption.] He said that in his own letter. Perhaps he needs to go back and reread it.

We surely cannot stand idly by and allow this situation of cronyism to continue. The current regime of standards and rules on the conduct of Ministers relies too much on convention, in these unconventional times. It gives the Prime Minister the power to act as judge and jury even when his own conduct is in question. That is why my party, the Labour party, has come forward with a five-point plan to clean up our politics, to strengthen and uphold standards in public life, and to protect taxpayers’ money from the egregious waste and mismanagement that we have seen during the pandemic.

We would start by banning second jobs for MPs, with only very limited exemptions, to make them focus on the day job, not the one on the side. We would stop the revolving door between Government and the companies that Ministers are supposed to regulate, banning ministers from taking lobbying, advisory or portfolio-related jobs for at least five years after they had left office. We would stop Conservative plans to allow foreign money to flow into British politics, and we would create strict rules to stop donations from shell companies. We would end the waste and mismanagement of taxpayers’ money with a new office for value for money along with reform of procurement. Finally, we would establish a new, genuinely independent integrity and ethics commission to sit across Government, with the power to investigate Ministers, take decisions on sanctions for misconduct, and ban former Ministers from taking any job linked to their former roles for at least five years after leaving office.

[Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)]

I am very confused by what the hon. Lady has said, because I am under the impression that three current Front-Bench Labour parliamentarians in the House of Lords work for lobbying companies. How can you say what you have said at the Dispatch Box—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman must not refer to the hon. Lady using the word “you”, because that is me.

[Alexander Stafford]

I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker. How can we talk about these issues when current members of the Labour Front Bench work for lobbying companies? It is hypocrisy of the highest order.

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[Steven Bonnar (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)]

Two weeks ago, I stood in this spot and spoke about how parliamentary time was being wasted by the Prime Minister wanting to save one of his own corrupt former MPs; today, we have the opportunity to stand here and consider why we should put up with this.

We and people outside this place are living in a society of staggering inequality. We have thousands relying on food banks, with wages pitifully low and the cost of living extremely high, yet we have a Prime Minister who oversees the consistent approach of raiding benefits, keeping wages low and increasing taxes for the working poor, yet rewarding big business and those of accumulated wealth while turning a blind eye to wealthy tax dodgers. He is a Prime Minister with his own agenda—a Prime Minister who is a democracy denier, stood on a hill of sleaze. That is exactly why it is right that we have brought forward this motion in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford).

The Prime Minister’s Government and his leadership have failed—from Brexit lies on buses to gleefully telling of handshaking with covid patients lying stricken in hospital beds. We have seen cash for honours, cash for contracts, texts for tax breaks, cash for curtains—I am trying to fit all this in—and handouts for wallpaper. Time and again, we see who he really is—a natiform metaphor for corruption, collusion and institutional sleaze engrained in this Tory party. We need always to remember that those who hide vast sums of money or hoard their wealth in offshore accounts are not hiding it from the authorities—oh, no, Madam Deputy Speaker—in the UK, they are the authority. The Prime Minister himself registered on his interests his stay at a luxury Spanish villa as being provided free of charge by the family of Lord Goldsmith, who, by mere coincidence the Tories will claim, had been handed a peerage and a ministerial job after an electoral defeat. Yet, at Cabinet Office questions last Thursday, the Minister had the temerity to claim:

“There is no link between party donations and nominations to sit in the House of Lords.”—[Official Report, 25 November 2021; Vol. 704, c. 436.]

In the same session, in relation to the contributions—or lack of—of the Tory treasurer in the Lords, the Minister said that it was about, “Quality not quantity”. Apparently, this is our democracy in action.

Let me make this clear: in my opinion, there is nothing noble about the men and women who are sitting in that place—nothing—and even less so when they buy their place in there and their ermine robe—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman should not be directly criticising members of the House of Lords. So I want him to readdress that in his speech. He must not continue to do that. He should move on to his next subject.

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[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

I truly wish it was a privilege and a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami). Has he heard of the word “mandate”? Actually, the one he knows really well is “deflection”.

I had hoped that the Prime Minister would step up to the mark when he assumed high office. I tell my granddaughters that I am disappointed, not angry, when they conduct themselves badly, but I am truly disappointed and angry, but not surprised, with the current Prime Minister, given his predilection for saying what he thinks people want to hear, and changing his mind and breaking promises when it suits.

I wish Scotland were not part of this Union, but while we are, SNP MPs like me must and should censure the current Prime Minister for dishonourable conduct that reflects badly on the UK both here and internationally. The Prime Minister seems to believe that it is okay to say one thing and do another, or to plough ahead with policies, in the middle of a pandemic, that cause real hardship to ordinary families and even more so to our vulnerable communities. Woe betide any person or organisation that gets in the way of what the Prime Minister and the Conservative party see as their divine right to govern how they like. Their attacks on the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and on MPs who disagree are vile and undermine all independent checks, which are supposed to protect us all from abuses of power. The Westminster system is broken, and the sooner Scotland can break free of it, the better.

This Prime Minister thinks he can say or do what he likes without hindrance. We as MPs owe it to our constituents to challenge him and his Government to disabuse them of that notion, hence this motion today. Pork barrel politics is now the norm for this Conservative Government. It is much more likely that a Tory marginal seat will receive Government funding than an area that truly needs and deserves it. Seven out of 10 Cabinet Ministers were in low-priority most developed areas, but first in line for significant funding. As we say in Scotland, they do not even put a face on it. The Good Law Project has mounted a legal challenge to the levelling-up fund allocation to assess whether the funding is based on Tory ministerial bias and toeing the party line on certain issues. The Prime Minister believes in helping cronies and Ministers, and the devil take the hindmost. He enjoys unaccountable power, and can and has dismissed independent advice on alleged breaches of ministerial rules.

I want to focus this speech on how what the Prime Minister has done affects disabled people and families with disabled children. We are still in the middle of a public health crisis and inflation is now running at 5%, energy companies are failing, the cost of heating our homes is even higher and mortgage increases are likely. These things worry people in Scotland and the rest of the UK—I work hard for my constituents, and I challenge this Government on a daily basis to make their lives better—but none of this seems to concern this Prime Minister. What matters to him is money and protecting those who have it. There is yet another case going through the courts raised by two employment and support allowance claimants who are claiming that the Department for Work and Pensions acted unlawfully and discriminated against disabled people by not giving the uplift to those on legacy benefits. This sleazy UK Government, headed by a Prime Minister who does not understand how disabled people struggle to live, must look to the Scottish social security system, which is based on the principles of dignity, fairness and respect.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order.

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[Marion Fellows]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I ask the Member to withdraw the remark about the worst health record in the world? I want to save him from embarrassment in the press.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I am sure the hon. Lady will understand that I am not responsible for what the hon. Gentleman says. I am sure—[Interruption.] Order. I am sure that if he feels he has said anything that is incorrect, he will want to correct the record.

[Lee Anderson]

I might make a slight correction here: perhaps I should have referred to the drug deaths, which are the worst in the western world.

What we need to chat about is the Westminster leader of the SNP, the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), who has been very quiet about the £270,00 he has rinsed from outside earnings since he was elected to Westminster in 2015. It would take the average worker in Scotland 11 years to earn that much money yet he stands over there every single Wednesday talking about poverty when his greedy snout is firmly in the trough; and remember this is on top—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

No, no: it was made very clear at the beginning of this debate that we were not going to insult each other. The motion is about the conduct of the Prime Minister so perhaps we can take the temperature down a little.

[Lee Anderson]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am just trying to create an argument and my closing comments will back up what I am saying now.

The right hon. Gentleman has not even apologised for the drunken loutish behaviour of his own MPs who during a trip to Gibraltar just a few weeks ago were spotted staggering around—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman must resume his seat. He is straying a long way from the motion. He is also referring to certain Members; I do not know whether they are here or not, but he should have notified them if he was going to refer to them. I suggest he resumes his speech and bears in mind the points I have made, because I would hate to think the public were looking at us and thinking that this has just become a slanging match.

[Lee Anderson]

rose—

[Owen Thompson]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Member is making clearly erroneous accusations against Members that are simply not true; I ask for your guidance on how the Member can remove those comments and correct the record.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I think I made my views very clear. First, it is very important not to make references to Members who are not here if the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) is accusing them of something; secondly, I hope we can maintain an element of courtesy in this debate—although it is not going well so far in the hon. Gentleman’s speech.

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[Lee Anderson]

I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for his sensible intervention. I only have to look at my constituency, Ashfield, one of the poorest in the country, and at neighbouring Bolsover, Don Valley and Rother Valley—all those places have had millions of pounds of investment. The Prime Minister has also launched our plan for jobs, helping people get back into work. We are cutting taxes, we are boosting wages—we are helping working families.

I am going to stop picking on the SNP, because I want to talk about the massed ranks of the Labour party. I am struggling to see them at the moment. Despite pretending to be bothered, they could not be bothered to turn up today. They seem to think that there is a war raging in France at the moment and that it is acceptable for thousands of illegal migrants to cross our channel every single day. They really need to get a grip.

Another sign that the Labour party has lost the plot is that it wants to replace our armed forces with “human security services”—a shift from the classic armed forces to a gender balanced, ethnically diverse human security services tasked with dampening down violence. Imagine that, Madam Deputy Speaker: a peace-loving British tank—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. This is a motion about the Government. I am afraid the hon. Gentleman needs to bring his remarks to a close. I want him to resume his seat. I call Wendy Chamberlain.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. There have been a lot of interventions. As a result, I will have to take the time limit down to three minutes. I have been able to warn the next speaker, but I urge colleagues to be aware that if they continue to take interventions, not everyone will get in.

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[Paul Holmes (Eastleigh) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I will take the point of order, but I feel quite strongly that the debate should not be constantly interrupted by points of order which are, in fact, matters for debate.

[Paul Holmes]

As a new Member of Parliament, Madam Deputy Speaker, I need to ask your advice. Is it acceptable in the House to use the word “liar”, and to accuse a Member of lying?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman may not have been in the Chamber at the beginning of the debate, but the Chairman of Ways and Means made it very clear that, in the particular circumstances of this debate, some language that could not normally be used is allowed because of the nature of the motion.

[Alan Brown]

For the record, the slogan on the bus was a downright lie.

This is a Prime Minister who gave us an illegal prorogation of Parliament, and was willing to break international law. This is a Prime Minister who clearly does not respect democracy, and is seeking to undermine it further. We have the introduction of voter ID, and lifetime votes for expatriates because he thinks that that they are more likely to vote Tory. He has given himself the power to call an election. We have seen the attack on the Electoral Commission, the privatisation of Channel 4, the attempts to install Paul Dacre as chair of Ofcom, and the secret freedom of information clearing house. All those are further levers to manipulate and to hold on to power. Moreover, this a man who once conspired to have a reporter beaten up, and who was sacked from his own job as a journalist for lying in a story. As we have heard, he also continues to stuff the House of Lords with cronies and donors. It is outrageous that he suggested to the Liaison Committee that that was necessary to counteract the power of trade unions.

All this explains why the Prime Minister rushed to the defence of Owen Paterson over paid lobbying. So many of my constituents ask me how I can put up with the antics in this place, but one thing I can tell the Tories is that this is driving people towards independence.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I have to keep people absolutely to time.

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[Richard Thomson]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and she says it very eloquently and succinctly. We have a crisis of confidence in this country. We have a crisis of confidence in the Prime Minister, who is clearly not fit for the job with which he has been entrusted. This is being aided and abetted by the silence and complicity of far too many Conservative Members, and I cannot wait to see which Lobby the Scottish Conservative contingent, in particular, chooses to go through this evening.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Because of that intervention, I am afraid that the final speaker is going to be able to have only two and a half minutes, unless the SNP spokesperson would take a little less.

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[Pete Wishart]

Absolutely and utterly. It would take all day—longer than I am allowed—just to list the corruption and sleaze in even the scantiest of detail. Conservative Members are up to their necks in it. They might wish, as they have been doing all afternoon, that the public did not care about it, but the public care very much. I will tell them who they have to blame: the very man mentioned in the motion. It is their Prime Minister who has led them to fall in the polls. I thought they would be rushing to join us this evening—come and roam in the gloaming with us in the Aye Lobby as we censure the Prime Minister—because he has treated them appallingly, almost to the point of cruelty. They are having to defend themselves against their constituents. They are actually having to say to their constituents that Peppa Pig is not a Government Minister, such is the confusion that abounds. They should join us tonight: they know it is the right thing to do. The Prime Minister has treated them appallingly and they should help us this evening.

The Prime Minister has gone from being Conservative Members’ brightest Brexit asset to being their biggest liability. Forget about being led to the top of the hill; they have had to carve out a new gorge and mountain range for the amount of mountaineering they have had to do. That is why they should help us. They thought they would saunter to their next election victory, but the Prime Minister has sorted that.

I have to say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber that I am a bit conflicted by the motion. I am conflicted not in the sense that I do not think we have a disgrace of a Prime Minister—somebody who should not get within several feet of Larry the cat, let alone the No. 10 sitting room—but because this Prime Minister is the best recruiting sergeant that we have for the cause of Scottish independence. What would we do without him? [Interruption.] They are all agreeing with me on the Government Benches. He is! More than anybody else, he has made sure that the cause of Scottish independence has been promoted in the way it has and we have to thank him for that. I have to say to my right hon. Friend that I am a little bit conflicted. I will back the motion because the Prime Minister is useless, because he is corrupt, because he is sleazeworthy, and because he lies to this House, but, by God, what a job he has done for the cause of Scottish independence. For that, we have him to thank.

As I have been thanking people over the course of this debate, it would be lax of me not to also thank the Conservative Back-Bench Members. I thank them for their efforts today—they were absolutely fantastic. Something that they always forget when they get up and make their stupid speeches is that the people of Scotland are watching them. They were enamoured by the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson)—he is not in his place, which is really unfortunate—because of his disgraceful speech. People of Scotland watched these speeches and thought, “Why on earth would I want to be in this minging midden with these people speaking about my nation in such a way?” For that, I thank the Tory Back Benchers most sincerely. They have done a stellar job today in ensuring that Scottish independence happens.

There is a whole list of things to talk about, but there is just one issue that I will touch on—[Interruption.] My Tory fans are really backing what I am saying today. There is one issue that we really need to touch on because it has been mentioned so often by my hon. Friends: it is that place down the end of the corridor. What a place! The House of Lords is now Ground Zero of Tory corruption. The fact is that all but one of the last nine Tory treasurers were in that place. I looked up all of them. I was looking for philanthropy, good causes and charities, but the only thing that unites them—the only one defining feature—is this rare ability to be able to give £3 million to Tory coffers.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is veering very close to the line here. He must not accuse individuals from the House of Lords. I know that he will want to be finishing off quite soon.

[Pete Wishart]

I will obviously follow your strictures, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am not referring to individuals. I am referring to that place down the corridor.

Hardly any of the Labour party turned up today; two Back Benchers came along. I say to them all, “Help us! Help us to clean that place out”. They should not accept any more Members of the House of Lords, for goodness sake. We have this one opportunity, with all this Tory corruption going on.

I was listening to the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds). I like her. She is one of these genuine Labour Front Benchers. But there was nobody else from the Labour party today. What is that about? This is serious stuff. This is the behaviour of the Prime Minister. We are talking about his conduct generally and we need to make sure that the Labour party is with us in order to take this on.

We will not stop this. We want out of this House. Scotland will be an independent nation. We will not be here for much longer. The Scottish people are observing how business is done here, and they do not like it one bit. They do not like the speeches from the hon. Gentlemen and hon. Ladies on the Back Benches. They cannot stand this Prime Minister. More and more, the Scottish people are looking at this place and deciding that what they want is a nation of their own, a country that they can design in their own fashion and not have it determined by a Tory Prime Minister, and they are going to get it.