Business of the House

Tommy Sheppard Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Throughout the pandemic, one of the most heartening signs was the huge national effort by so many people across the country to rise to the challenge. The NHS does have a tried and tested track record for delivering vaccination programmes and will work with existing partners across the healthcare system to ensure a covid-19 vaccine can be deployed both safely and effectively. Detailed planning is under way, building on the NHS’s expertise in delivering immunisation programmes, and that includes consideration of the settings required to vaccinate the public against covid-19. We are grateful for the support that businesses have offered. My hon. Friend cites Hercules, and this will be one of the 12 labours of Hercules as it is rolled out.

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP) [V]]

I ask again: can we have a proper debate in which Members discuss and decide, on a free vote, the nature and extent of virtual participation in the proceedings of this Parliament while the pandemic lasts? The procedural shenanigans displayed by the Government on Tuesday, when they engineered call lists to conjure up a debate where none had been planned, were an affront to democracy. The attempts by the Leader of the House to suggest that those of us who argue for every Member to have the right to remote participation were in fact trying to deny that right to colleagues who are clinically vulnerable is offensive. I say to him in all sincerity that he is in grave danger of losing the confidence of the House, which he needs to perform his constitutional role. I hope that, rather than a glib response or a puerile putdown, he will demonstrate thoughtfulness and leadership, and allow elected Members to decide this matter.

The Leader of the House has made much of the need for democratic debate and scrutiny to continue, but yesterday the biggest change in public policy in a decade was announced in the spending review, with no opportunity to debate, amend or agree. We must debate public sector pay if the Government intend to cut the wages of those key workers they applauded from the steps of Downing Street. We must debate overseas aid if the Government are to slash support for the world’s poor, severely damaging the UK’s global reputation in a manner that would make Trump proud. These are not manifesto promises. The Government have no mandate for them, and they ought not to become the policy of the land without a vote in Parliament.

Finally, I come to the tragedy of Brexit—just five weeks to go and no deal in sight. Last week, I got no answer about the shared prosperity fund. Today, I want to ask for a debate on plugging the £170 million black hole left in Scotland’s rural economy as payments under the LEADER scheme end following withdrawal from the common agricultural policy. The silence on this is reckless and damaging to Scotland’s rural economy.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

To misquote P.G. Wodehouse, it is never difficult to tell the difference between a member of the SNP with a grievance and a ray of sunshine. It seems to me that the cloud across any ray of sunshine can always be provided by the hon. Gentleman. What does he say to us today? He says that a debate of over two hours is undemocratic. It was undemocratic to have a debate—that, I think, is an unusual view to hold—and then he thinks that a democratic vote, of 52% of the people of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, is a disaster. He seems only to like the votes that he wins, but the SNP, fortunately, does not win votes across the United Kingdom at large and lost a very important vote in 2014.

Why I think the hon. Gentleman should be a ray of sunshine is that he should be asking for a debate on the £2.4 billion extra announced in the spending review yesterday that is going to Scotland. He should be celebrating the fact that £1,633 extra is attributed to public spending per capita in Scotland against the United Kingdom average, and he should celebrate the fact that £8.2 billion of UK taxpayer money has gone to Scotland to help it fight the coronavirus. The evidence is that the United Kingdom is extraordinarily strong as a single United Kingdom, with taxpayers coming together to help one another.

I notice that the hon. Gentleman carefully avoided the fact, when he talked about the House’s confidence, that in Scotland, confidence may be ebbing away. I noticed that the SNP lost a vote in the Scottish Parliament yesterday over publishing the legal advice given to the Scottish Government on the judicial review brought by Alex Salmond. They were very happy to vote for the Attorney General to release his advice here under an Humble Address—sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander, or are they just turkeys waiting for Christmas?