Referral of Prime Minister to Committee of Privileges

Tim Roca Excerpts

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)]

The appointment of Mandelson was a profoundly flawed process; it was also a profoundly flawed choice—it was the wrong choice. I think of the victims of Epstein; I also think of Alistair Darling, who was a fine, committed public servant, and what he would be thinking today.

This afternoon, we are being asked to make several leaps of faith, one of which is to believe that just nine days from local and national elections, we are here not because of a political stunt co-ordinated by the Conservative party but to accept that the Conservatives have turned into a sober, principled set of defenders of parliamentary standards who are not interested in pre-election theatre. Nobody seriously believes that. Even their own press briefings give the game away: a senior Conservative source was reported as saying

“we got the privileges vote. That was the goal”

ahead of the local elections. The goal was not the truth, not the outcome, and not the merits of the case—it was simply to force the spectacle of a vote. That tells us everything we need to know about the intent behind what is happening this afternoon.

It is therefore no surprise that this debate has been widely characterised, even by those observing closely—political correspondents—as a win-win exercise for the Opposition. If they secure an inquiry, they claim vindication; if they lose, they still bank the headlines, the insinuation and the noise. That is not how the House should conduct itself when invoking one of the most serious mechanisms at its disposal.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Smethwick (Gurinder Singh Josan) powerfully pointed out, we are not dealing with a vacuum. Mechanisms are already in train, including the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Humble Address, and last week the Prime Minister answered questions for nearly three hours. That is important.

Referral to the Privileges Committee is not a partisan tool or a device to be deployed because one side sees a political opportunity. It exists for a clear, serious and evidenced prima facie case of misleading the House—cases that go to the heart of ministerial integrity.

[Dr Luke Evans]

If it is not party political, why is it being whipped?

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Roca]

Because it is so evident that what the hon. Member is participating in this afternoon is partly political. In fact, he is partaking in a particularly dishonourable act in doing this in such a partisan way.

To carry on with the case that I was making, I do not believe that what has been presented meets the bar that I just mentioned.

[Graham Stuart]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Tim Roca]

No, I am going to make some progress.

At most, what we are dealing with is an argument about, as I said, a deeply flawed appointment, a deeply flawed process and the judgments around it. Those are matters for political debate, for scrutiny and for challenge across the Chamber, but they are not in themselves grounds for alleging contempt of Parliament. If they were, the Privileges Committee would be constantly in session.

That brings me to the question of consistency. In recent years, the House has had to confront genuinely serious breaches: cases where standards were not just questioned but plainly and repeatedly violated; findings of bullying at the highest levels of government in the last Government; and Ministers in the last Government falling short of the standards expected of them. Most notably, we saw a former Conservative Prime Minister investigated and found to have repeatedly misled the House.

[Peter Fortune (Bromley and Biggin Hill) (Con)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Tim Roca]

I will finish this point; I might then give way if I am feeling generous.

That conduct was so grave that it resulted in a damning report, which I think the Leader of the Opposition abstained on, rather than voting in favour of it. Of course, that is quite aside from the fact that it also involved a criminal conviction.

There is no equivalence—none—between those cases and what is before us today. If there was, there would have been a genuine attempt at a cross-party piece of persuasion. Instead, what we got from the Leader of the Opposition was a rambling rollercoaster on Iran, the two-child benefit cap, U-turns and so on. To attempt to draw that comparison is not just wrong but diminishes the seriousness of those findings in the past. It risks turning the Privileges Committee from a guardian of standards into a weapon of convenience. The motion speaks the language of contempt—contempt of Parliament—but actually it reveals something else: the contempt in which the Opposition hold the British people.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Let us keep the temperament good.