Oral Answers to Questions

John Bercow Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

I rise with a degree of uncertainty, because ordinarily I seek to accommodate the hon. Lady, but the question has not been broadened by the character and contents of the answer, and I gently point out that Glasgow Central is a considerable distance from Cornwall. If she is sufficiently dextrous and can shoehorn an inquiry on Cornwall into a question about Cornwall that would be helpful.

[Alison Thewliss]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for your indulgence. Protection of the Cornish language is important, but there is no right, as there is for the Welsh, to write to the UK Government in Cornish, or to write to the UK Government in Gaelic and receive a response in that language. Would the Minister consider a UK language protection Bill that would protect Cornish and Scots Gaelic in the same way that Welsh is protected?

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[Mr Speaker]

I am not sure that the Minister is being accorded the respectful attention that his celebrity status within Her Majesty’s Government warrants, and I hope that there can be an improvement on that in the minutes ahead.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Yesterday, during the urgent question, the Government were asked how many names of EU citizens were transmitted from this country to other countries after the 7 May deadline. What is the Government’s response to the fact that, under the directive, article 9.4 says that EU citizens shall remain eligible to vote in perpetuity and not have to fill in additional forms?

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[Mr Lidington]

I am happy, in the first instance, to ensure that my hon. Friend has a meeting with the relevant Minister in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. I hope that that will enable him to find a way forward.

[Mr Speaker]

It would be a gross discourtesy if it were otherwise. It is extraordinary that the hon. Gentleman should have to ask for a meeting, but there we are. He is going to get his meeting.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q13. The US President said yesterday that the NHS would be on the table in any trade negotiation, and the Prime Minister did not intervene to stop him. The Lib Dems and Tories voted through the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which opened up the NHS to the US market, and 10% of it is already privatised. The Brexit party leader has no issue with US private healthcare insurance replacing our NHS. No party can be trusted with our NHS—except the Labour party. Is Labour now the only hope to save our NHS?

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

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

May I assume that it relates to matters that cannot wait until after the urgent questions—not because of the fullness of the hon. Gentleman’s diary but because the matter appertains to exchanges that have just taken place?

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I would say so, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

Oh, very good.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

Speaking on a day on which we commemorate the freedom of Europe, it came to my attention at the weekend that a fellow member of the Council of Europe—the Georgian state, and especially its Ministry of the Interior—will not provide security during Pride month to the first ever Pride march through Tbilisi. Given the history of anti-LGBT violence funded by the Russian state in previous years, I wonder, Mr Speaker, how we can convey not only to the Government of Georgia but to its ambassador in the United Kingdom that this House is not only concerned but gravely disappointed by their limitation on human dignity within the Georgian nation.

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman has partly achieved his objective by the ruse—and I will call it the ruse—of a point of order, which conceivably could have been the substitute for a question that he might have wanted to ask. If that was his objective, he has achieved it. I cannot speak for the House as a whole, but to judge from debates that have taken place in this Chamber in recent years, my strong sense is that his point will have struck a chord. The idea that such a march should not be able to take place within a safe space, with its participants’ physical security underpinned, offends very strongly against our instincts, so I hope that such measures as are necessary to be taken by Georgians will be taken.

More widely, if I heard the hon. Gentleman correctly, he made what struck me as a wholly uncontroversial observation about the record of the Russian state in human rights generally and, more particularly, the protection—or rather the non-protection—of the rights of LGBT people. That is a profoundly unsatisfactory state of affairs, and it is about time it became more civilised in these important matters. [Interruption.] It is always good to have the sedentary support of the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant), and I thank him for what he has said.