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Category: Parliament

  • Rushanari Ali – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    Rushanari Ali – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    The speech made by Rushanari Ali, the Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, in the House of Commons on 21 April 2022.

    When we entered the pandemic, the Government, led by the Prime Minister, rightly called on the British people to do the right thing and protect each other by following the law and the rules. That is why this affair has been so devastating for so many of us, including my constituents. We all, in different ways, have had to make sacrifices. Some of us lost loved ones and have not been able to mourn them properly because of the restrictions. That applies to many of our constituents up and down the country. I know that from first-hand experience. In my family, we lost friends and relatives and were not able to see their family members or to attend services and support the bereaved.

    I want to highlight a few of the many cases raised by those who wrote to me about this affair. Craig wrote to me about his grandmother. He said:

    “My grandmother was my best friend. She was admitted to hospital on the day the first cases of Covid were identified in the UK. She died in hospital in early June 2020.

    She spent the vast majority of her time in hospital alone, confused, with no visitors. It was terrible for us all and the first Covid lockdown will be forever remembered as one of the worst times of my life.

    I and the rest of my family closely adhered to all lockdown advice and the new laws put in place. My nan’s funeral took place the week of the Prime Minister’s birthday party. We were only allowed a handful of people in the service, most of our family and friends forced to line the street outside the crematorium…I cried while writing this email to you, reliving these memories. I cannot allow the Prime Minister and this government to re-write the history of the pandemic and dismiss our collective trauma as ‘just a slice of cake’ or ‘no worse than a speeding ticket’. The nation should not be gaslit into thinking that the pandemic was not so bad.”

    Another constituent said:

    “My mother was taken to…hospital…for a blood test in April 2020, a week after lockdown began. The test showed that she needed treatment before she could come home, but…we were given the totally unexpected news that she only had days to live.

    This devastating news was made worse because my father (who was then almost 90 years of age) and my three sisters and I knew that the lockdown rules meant that we would not be able to see my mother again and that she would die (as she did, two days later) with no-one from her family with her.

    So, how do you think my father, my sisters and I felt when the news broke of the partying in No 10, whilst we were adhering to the rules so strictly? I now feel even more angry when I hear government ministers, who I would hope would have some standards of integrity, coming forward on an almost daily basis to say that it’s not an important matter, that the Prime Minister is not to blame, that he has apologised so that makes it all right…I hadn’t intended to write to you. What has led me to do so is Ministers comparing ‘Partygate’ to parking and speeding fines, and the fact that the Prime Minister is going to issue another full apology as though that will make it all right. For me, it doesn’t!”

    Another constituent said:

    “I just wanted to add my voice to those asking for the Prime Minister’s resignation. I buried my mum about a week before he attended that party that broke the law. We couldn’t even hug at the funeral, which was only allowed ten attendees. No political story has ever made me this furious. I feel like I’ve been scammed by my own government, taken for an absolute fool for obeying the very laws they set…If the Prime Minister can’t even uphold a standard so basic as the rule of law, what are we as a country?”

    The final story I want to share is of a health and social care worker. She said:

    “I know first-hand the impact Covid has had on vulnerable people and the front line…We should not be living in a country where there is one rule for the PM and government ministers and another one for everyone else.”

    Those are voices of pain amid so many messages, emails, cards and letters I received. They are voices of agony and sacrifice—so many cries of pain from the British people, who deserve better. The public rose magnificently to the task of tackling the pandemic. We need to ensure that the motion is supported today. I will support it, and I am glad that some Government Members will. I hope that others will hear the voices of people up and down the country, and will support it, too.

  • Clive Efford – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    Clive Efford – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    The speech made by Clive Efford, the Labour MP for Eltham, in the House of Commons on 21 April 2022.

    Several hon. Members have referred to the collateral damage that the Prime Minister leaves in his wake, as he has done throughout his career. For example, the Paymaster General, who is on the Front Bench today, said on 9 December during a statement on the Christmas party at No. 10 Downing Street:

    “The Prime Minister has been repeatedly assured since these allegations emerged that there was no party and that no covid rules were broken.”—[Official Report, 9 December 2021; Vol. 705, c. 561.]

    We now know that there were several parties, not just one, and that the rules were broken, because fines have been issued, one of which the Prime Minister has received. Part of the collateral damage, therefore, is that the Paymaster General came here to make a statement, based on the same information that allegedly was given to the Prime Minister, and misled the House. I accept that the Paymaster General did so inadvertently, but what has he done about that? The record needs correcting. Surely he should be investigating how he came to be misinformed and to misinform the House.

    This has happened on too many occasions for ignorance to be the defence. There is this idea that, throughout lockdown and all the occasions on which these parties took place and the rules were broken, none of the bright young things who had been invited ever thought that any one of those events might break covid rules. Is it conceivable that no one raised a single question about whether they might be breaking the rules? Some of those events were drinks events for people who were leaving. In our constituencies, people missed funerals and cancelled weddings and birthday parties. However, the people in No. 10 thought that it was okay to have leaving drinks. Where are they? What were they thinking? How out of touch with our constituents can they be to think that they can have a leaving drinks party and are more important than our constituents?

    Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)

    My hon. Friend is making a good speech, and that is a good point. I want to make a point about the impact of breaking the law, and how it hurt people and continues to do so. My constituent told me:

    “Boris Johnson broke the law partying with his colleagues while I watched my father die through a care home window. My father gave up on life because he could not have any proper connection with much-needed family during recovery from a stroke. I think he could still be alive today if I was able to break the law by having a close connection with him”,

    but, they say, they were not in the privileged position of the Prime Minister.

    Clive Efford

    What my hon. Friend read out speaks for itself. She has demonstrated, as have many others, through the cases they mentioned, that the problem starts at the top. The workers who organised the parties would not have done so if they thought that their bosses would be upset, would come down on them and say, “You are breaking the rules. Stop it.” We now know that on at least six occasions, the Prime Minister was present at these parties, so this problem comes right from the top.

    The Prime Minister’s defence has been different on many occasions. He started by saying that no rules were broken. He then said that there was a party, but that he was not present—but then he was. Then he said, “I wasn’t warned that it wasn’t a work do.” I did not see anything about a work do in the rules, but perhaps I missed that. The person who writes the rules cannot misunderstand them so fundamentally.

    Setting that aside, if the Prime Minister’s defence is, “I didn’t understand the rules; I needed them explained to me” and “I was misled at the outset about there having been a party, because people told me that there wasn’t one,” who misled him? What has happened to them? Are they still in their posts? Have they moved on? Have they signed non-disclosure agreements? Where are those people who misled the Prime Minister, which led him to him inadvertently misleading the House? We cannot have this both ways: either the Prime Minister knowingly came to this House and lied, or other people lied to him, which led to him misleading the House. Either way, we need to identify those people.

    The worst crime of all, however, is failing to feel the pain that our constituents felt throughout lockdown. No one who felt the agony and understood the pain that people were going through, as in the example that my hon. Friend read out, could have attended the events that happened in No. 10 Downing Street and other places. The question for Tory MPs today is this: do you stand by the people who felt that pain and vote today for—

    Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)

    The hon. Gentleman knows that he must not use the word “you”.

    Clive Efford

    This applies to you too, Madam Deputy Speaker. Will Tory MPs stand by the people who felt that pain throughout the past two years? They deserve answers. As others have pointed out, this is about fundamental trust in our politics. When Tory MPs vote today, they should think about the damage that they are doing to the trust in our political process, because the public deserve better. They should think about that before they vote. This matter should go before the Privileges Committee. They know that, so they should vote for that.

  • Peter Aldous – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    Peter Aldous – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    The speech made by Peter Aldous, the Conservative MP for Waveney, in the House of Commons on 21 April 2022.

    I would like to make three brief observations.

    First, Mr Speaker was quite right to decide that there was an arguable case to be examined by the Committee of Privileges. That is the issue in front of us today, not whether the Prime Minister intentionally misled the House. That is for the Committee to decide. While in many respects this situation is completely unprecedented, there have been similar cases which confirm that such a referral is the right course to pursue: the 1947 case of Mr Garry Allighan; the 1977 case involving Reginald Maudling, John Cordle and Albert Roberts; and the 2005 case of Stephen Byers, which I shall comment on further shortly.

    The second point to decide is the timing of the consideration by the Committee of Privileges. The motion states that that should not begin in a substantive way until the inquiries conducted by the Metropolitan Police have been concluded. The amendment, which will not be moved, states that any vote should wait until the police investigations have been completed and Sue Gray’s report has been concluded. In many respects, we could go round and round in circles as to which of those courses is the right one to pursue. Thus, it is welcome that the amendment is not being moved.

    Finally, I return to the case of Mr Stephen Byers and the manner in which that equivalent debate, on 19 October 2005, took place. The then Leader of the House, Geoff Hoon, concluded the debate by stating:

    “The Government support the motion because it is necessary for the House to refer possible breaches of the rules to the Standards and Privileges Committee for investigation. The Government respect the privileges of the House and we will uphold them. They are crucial to the independence of Parliament and the strength of our democracy.”

    He concluded by saying:

    “I urge Members to refrain from treating the matter as a party political question.”—[Official Report, 19 October 2005; Vol. 437, c. 849.]

    The motion was passed without Division.

    I acknowledge that in this instance the stakes are much, much higher and that hon. Members from right across the Chamber quite rightly, as we have heard this morning, hold passionate views on this matter. But that approach, I would suggest, is the right one for us to pursue

  • Christian Matheson – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    Christian Matheson – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    The speech made by Christian Matheson, the Labour MP for the City of Chester, in the House of Commons on 21 April 2022.

    There has been a lot of talk about apologies. I remind the House that the motion is not about whether the Prime Minister has apologised but whether he knowingly lied to the House. He has not apologised for that—he has not even admitted it. In fact, he has persistently and consistently said that “there was no party”, that there was no cake and that there was a party but there was no cake—I could go on. I welcome those apologies, but let us be clear about what the motion says.

    Earlier, the leader of the SNP, the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), reflected the words of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) about the Prime Minister’s modus operandi: he leaves a trail of chaos in his wake and lets other people pick up and take responsibility for the problems that he has caused. The latest victim of that—I told him that I would mention this—is Mr Speaker and the office of the chair. Recently, when he had to chuck out the leader of the SNP for calling the Prime Minister a liar, he got huge amounts of public opprobrium, saying, “What on earth is Speaker Hoyle doing? Why is he chucking out the leader of the SNP when we know what the Prime Minister is up to?” The Prime Minister does not mind because somebody else takes the criticism for that. He is undermining not simply Mr Speaker but this House and, as hon. Members have said, our democratic system. The public cannot understand what on earth is going on when one person gets thrown out and the person who is the root of the problem is happy to stay there smirking on the Front Bench. That is his modus operandi, and it is dragging our democratic system down.

    We all make mistakes. I make mistakes, and I have had to correct the record. We have heard about apologies and about the Prime Minister being contrite, but I do not recall one occasion on which he has come back to the House and corrected the record. Not one. I think that there is an outstanding letter to him from the UK Statistics Authority about a misleading claim that he has yet to come back to correct. The bottom line is that the Prime Minister will say whatever is necessary at one point to get out of whatever situation he is in, with no sense of obligation to the truth or to whatever promise he has just made. I have scribbled down a list of five or 10 promises he has made and broken, but, as I do not want you to call me up, Madam Deputy Speaker, as we are talking specifically about the occasions when he denied there was a party, that list will have to wait for another occasion—but there will be another occasion.

    As I have said, the Prime Minister is damaging the UK’s reputation abroad. Outside this Chamber, our partners abroad—as well as our adversaries and enemies—can see that he is losing credibility and they cannot necessarily work with him because his word cannot be trusted. That damages the UK, and that is serious at a time of international crisis.

    I finish by quoting an article from The Guardian by Simon Kuper about the Oxford Union and a younger version of the Prime Minister who wrote an essay on Oxford politics for his sister’s book, “The Oxford Myth”:

    “His essay tackles the great question: how to set about becoming the next prime minister? Johnson advises student politicians to assemble ‘a disciplined and deluded collection of stooges’ to get out the vote.”

    Remember that this was just after he left university. The quote from the Prime Minister in his earlier days continues:

    “The tragedy of the stooge is that…he wants so much to believe that his relationship with the candidate is special that he shuts out the truth. The terrible art of the candidate is to coddle the self-deception of the stooge.”

    Those were the Prime Minister’s views then. They are apparently still the Prime Minister’s views today. The British people have made up their mind and for them the penny has dropped. I say to hon. Members on the Conservative Benches that it is time for the penny to drop for them as well. They need to search their feelings. They know it to be true. This is the manner of the Prime Minister and today is the time finally to put a line underneath that.

  • Alexander Stafford – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    Alexander Stafford – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    The speech made by Alexander Stafford, the Conservative MP for Rother Valley, in the House of Commons on 21 April 2022.

    Much has already been said about the police’s investigation, as a result of which the Prime Minister was issued with a civil penalty. He paid it immediately and came to this House at the earliest opportunity to give a heartfelt apology. Not only that: it is clear that he and the Government do not oppose moving the matter to the Privileges Committee, which shows that his contrition is right and true.

    Let me be clear that the Prime Minister’s apology was the right thing to do. Each and every single Briton across the length and breadth of our beautiful country has made sacrifices during the pandemic. When my first daughter was born, my wife was seriously ill and, because of that, I could not see my daughter for five days. I made sacrifices. All my residents made sacrifices. Even the Prime Minister made sacrifices when he almost died from covid and, as we know, when his family members died, he could not attend their funerals.

    All politicians should be held to the highest standards, be that the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) or the Scottish First Minister, and all of them have been caught and photographed in covid-compromising positions. They should all be referred to the Privileges Committee to be investigated.

    The Prime Minister paid the fine, and rightly so. He has been unequivocal that he respects the outcome of the police’s investigation and that he will always take the appropriate steps. The central issue is whether he intentionally or knowingly—those are the vital words—misled the House. I point to an article published in The Times on Saturday 20 June 2020, the day after the event in question in Downing Street. It reads:

    “Boris Johnson celebrated his 56th birthday yesterday with a small gathering in the cabinet room. Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, and a group of aides sang him Happy Birthday before they tucked into a Union Jack cake. The celebrations provided a brief respite after another gruelling week”.

    The Prime Minister has said that it did not occur to him then or subsequently that a gathering in the Cabinet room just before a vital meeting on covid strategy—to save lives—could amount to a breach of the rules. That event in No. 10 was reported the next day in a national newspaper and did not then prove controversial. It is unfathomable that the Prime Minister’s team would have alerted journalists to the event and incriminated him if he believed that it was against the rules. That does not make sense. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister apologised and has been punished. Further, for transparency, he has welcomed the matter being moved to the Privileges Committee.

    I also want to briefly address an article yesterday in The Times, which reported that

    “Sir Keir Starmer had warned Tory backbenchers that they would pay a price for blocking an investigation”

    including personal attacks for supporting the Prime Minister. It is outrageous that the Leader of the Opposition came here on a day on which we talked about tolerance in politics to lay out such a threat of bullying against Members of this House. We all have our own minds. We may all disagree, but I and many colleagues have had death threats and to threaten people and to try to stoke that is incredibly dangerous.

    Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)

    There were no threats of bullying made. What we are talking about is an electoral threat. I have had to take two death threats to the police that directly quoted words said in this place by the Prime Minister of our country. People have attacked my office on the basis of the words of our Prime Minister and, when that was raised with him, he said, “humbug”.

    Alexander Stafford

    We must be honest that we face death threats on both sides of the House—[Interruption.]. No, this is an important point. No one should get abuse in their job. My point is that only yesterday—a day when we were talking about debates—the article said:

    “Tory backbenchers…would pay a price”

    through personalised attacks. I am sorry that the hon. Member received death threats; she should not have done.

    Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con)

    Is not the point that we all face abuse from being in this place—as one of the youngest Members in the Chamber, I fear every day for the bullying and harassment that I will receive—and that all targeted attacks do is stoke the flames so that we receive more abuse?

    Alexander Stafford

    Indeed, they do. We should all rise above that and treat each other with the courtesy that everyone needs in a place of work. Sadly, we have witnessed the violence that colleagues have been exposed to and, ultimately, the deaths of two colleagues.

    Going forward, the Prime Minister has clearly taken significant measures to improve how things are working in No. 10, and there are more changes to come. We have talked about Christian forgiveness. I am a Christian—a Catholic—and this is a Christian country. Forgiveness is at the core of what we believe. The Prime Minister has offered a heartfelt apology and his contrition. He has come to the House, and he is happy for the matter to go to the Privileges Committee; he does not oppose that. He has apologised. We need to look at that.

    It is now time to crack on with the priorities for our country. We have an obligation to deliver on our election promises, and I look forward to the Government focusing on important issues for my constituents in Rother Valley, including getting the Rwanda illegal immigration scheme up and running as soon as possible and winning the war against the fascist Putin. The Rwanda scheme will save lives, defeating Putin will save lives and, through covid, the Government have saved many lives in this country.

  • Liz Saville Roberts – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    Liz Saville Roberts – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    The speech made by Liz Saville Roberts, the Plaid Cymru MP for Dwyfor Meirionnydd, in the House of Commons on 21 April 2022.

    Before I start my main points, I want to mention a couple of things that I have been listening to. First, many of us on this side were aware that the Government were trying to kick the issue down the road with their abandoned amendment. We are two weeks away from the local elections, and their action begs the question of whether desperation to ensure that the way their MPs voted was not on the record was their motivator.

    Secondly, the Government’s approach is that they live in hope that the public’s memory is ruled by the news cycle and that the public interest will move on. I believe that they are fundamentally wrong in that assumption. Everybody who made a personal sacrifice during covid will remember their loss, pain and grief for the rest of their lives. It is engraved on our hearts. We are not going to forget. The Government may kick this down the road, but they are wrong if they assume that their safety is tied up with the news cycle. The Prime Minister’s behaviour will not be forgotten.

    Today we have a chance to correct the record, to reinstate credibility in our system and hold Conservative Members—and, indeed, all of us—to account, not only for their or our misdeeds but for our preparedness on occasion to defend the indefensible. Today is a chance for all Members, of all parties, to do the right thing, and our names should be on record when we want to do the right thing.

    Public trust in our democratic system is plummeting as we careen from one scandal to another, and the very reputation of our democracy, ourselves and the function that we are honoured with here is seemingly at stake.

    Some 73% of the British public are in favour of a Bill that would criminalise politicians who willingly lie to the British public. Plaid Cymru has been calling for stronger measures to ban politicians from lying in their public role, not just in the past few months, but for 15 years.

    We all know that we live in an age of public disenchantment. From that same poll, conducted by Compassion in Politics, we learnt that 47% of people have lost trust in UK politicians during the past 12 months. If we look back at the momentous events over the period, from the fall of Kabul to the pandemic to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the cost of living crisis, what other conclusion can we draw than that we have failed in our duty to uphold the public’s trust?

    That sense of failure is not just a rhetorical gambit, a professional nicety or an optional extra for us here. From anti-vaxxers to the Putin regime, when we fail to confront mistruths, we create a truth vacuum in which division takes hold. When any “truth” is as good as any other, division along political lines comes to matter more than agreement on the common ground of facts. That matters.

    We work in an institution where we cannot call out the lies of another Member, regardless of their position of responsibility—lies that are broadcast around the country, recorded for posterity and therefore impressed on the memories of millions of people. We have no way of addressing that effectively.

    Although I defer to the Speaker’s judgment in this matter, partygate has demonstrated conclusively that our self-regulating system is no longer fit for purpose. The ministerial code has been proven not worth the paper it was written on. Gentlemen’s honourable agreements depend on the existence of honour. We must do better. If we cannot do better, because we make a mockery of the public’s concerns by shrugging our shoulders and accepting that it is merely part and parcel of modern politics, we must be compelled to do better.

    We as legislators must legislate to uphold our good names, and, by extension, the good name and efficacy of democracy itself. A first step would be a Bill; a second would be rebuilding our political model, much as Wales and our Co-operation Agreement has done, so that politics is built around what we share, rather than that which divides us. Honesty is the most important currency in politics. We have to restore it before we here are responsible in part for bankrupting our society.

  • Karl Turner – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    Karl Turner – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    The speech made by Karl Turner, the Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull East, in the House of Commons on 21 April 2022.

    I intend to speak for less than five minutes. This is probably the most unusual debate that I have had the privilege of speaking in since I was elected to this House in 2010. It is unusual because when I suggested on Tuesday that the electorate had already concluded that the Prime Minister was either a liar or an idiot, I was called to order by Mr Speaker, who was perhaps right to do so; but the truth is that we have good reason to suggest that we have been misled by the Prime Minister, because he repeatedly said that no rules were broken and that no parties had taken place. He then suggested that he did not understand the terribly complex rules that had been written by him and his Government, and that he could not get his head around them.

    Contemptuously, the spin men and women of Downing Street then suggested that the Prime Minister’s fine was a bit like a speeding offence. As the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) said, it is nothing like a speeding offence; it is a criminal sanction. In fact, if we want to talk about speeding offences, there is something called the totting-up procedure. If someone gets one speeding offence, they receive three penalty points. If they manage to end up with four offences in three years, they are disqualified from driving for a minimum of 12 months. If a newly qualified driver does not understand the rules and gets two speeding penalties, they are disqualified from driving. In fact, they have their driving licence revoked.

    I had rehearsed a speech that I was intending to make today, but I have binned it because my constituent Wendy Phillips contacted me while I was waiting to be called. She is watching the debate and said:

    “Your constituent Lily Camm, Tory voter for over 50 years, fell ill with Covid exactly 2 years ago—4 weeks later died in care home whilst PM partied. Family feel so guilty as she was only in care home for her safety for 5 months. We let her down.

    Am watching this in tears—I let her down, I was her voice & I persuaded her to enter this care home for her own good. I carry the guilt daily.”

    I pray in aid Conservative Members, who should think very carefully about the decision that they take on behalf of their constituencies. They should look in the mirror and see who is looking back. Is it someone who is honourable, and who is not prepared to put up with a Prime Minister misleading the country? If they do not, I am afraid to tell them that the electorate, who have already decided, will make their anger known at the next election.

  • Steve Baker – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    Steve Baker – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    The speech made by Steve Baker, the Conservative MP for Wycombe, in the House of Commons on 21 April 2022.

    The whole House can now see that this matter has moved far, far beyond law into matters of deep politics and fundamental values. As we consider both the motion and the issue at hand, every last Member of this House might remember some very old wisdom: if anyone ever says that they never fall short, never break a rule or never harm someone else, they deceive themselves and truth is not within them.

    I am very grateful that we live in a society where there is the possibility of redemption and the possibility of mercy—where if somebody fulsomely apologises in a spirit of humility, going on for some hours, there is a possibility of redemption. That, of course, is not to excuse what has been done; it is not to defend it or condone it, or in any way to say that what went on was okay. It is to accept that it was wrong and nevertheless forgive—and forgiveness is difficult; no one should pretend otherwise.

    Wera Hobhouse

    Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

    Mr Baker

    I think the hon. Lady is going to enjoy the rest of my speech, but I give way for a moment.

    Wera Hobhouse

    The hon. Gentleman talks about redemption and forgiveness, but should not things be done at the earliest point possible rather than drawing them out like the Prime Minister has done? This is his main problem. Had he come here immediately and at least expressed his doubt about maybe being at something that he did not consider to be a party, it would have been better, but the fact that he denied everything is the main problem that we in this House find so difficult to swallow.

    Mr Baker

    I am grateful to the hon. Lady. I think she will recognise the spirit and inspiration of what I am saying, as people did on Tuesday, but I do not wish to be drawn excessively into theology about the timing of one’s repentance, and I will move on.

    Many Members of this House—I can see some of them on the Opposition Benches—choose to live their lives under certain commands: to love even their enemies, to bless those who curse them and, yes, to forgive as they are forgiven, sometimes for grave matters. So when I sat here and listened to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister say the words he said in the House of Commons—which I will not put back on the record, because people know what he said—and when I read them again in Hansard, I think that is an apology worthy of consideration of forgiveness for what went on, because this has moved beyond law. As far as I know, no one else in this country is being investigated by the police for retrospective offences—it is gone, it is behind them, it is past—but those in No. 10 Downing Street are being held to a higher standard in ways that other members of the public are not. [Interruption.] I can hear Members barracking, but that is right.

    When we imposed these not merely draconian but barbaric rules on other people, everybody in the centre of power should have understood that they had to obey not merely the letter but the spirit of those rules. There should have been no cake in No. 10 and no booze in No. 10; these things should not have happened. I do not defend or condone in any way what happened.

    Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)

    I am mesmerised by the hon. Gentleman’s psychic powers if he does not understand that all offences are retrospective—unless he knows someone who is going to commit an offence. To err is human and to forgive divine, but to transgress repeatedly, as the report already shows us, is something else. Is it not important that we have this inquiry now to understand whether that has happened and there has been a repeated offence against the House? In the past year, half of the public have lost what little trust they had in politicians. The longer this goes on and the more repetition there is, the more all of us are besmirched. Is it not right, in the spirit of forgiveness and redemption, that we are all given the opportunity for salvation?

    Mr Baker

    Not for the first time, the hon. Lady tempts me to give her references. On the point about repeated offences and forgiveness, I would encourage her to look at Romans 7. She invites me to clarify what I said. Of course all offences are retrospective. My point is that the police are treating Downing Street staff especially harshly in a way that the rest of the public are not being treated. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) wants to say that is not true, I will take his intervention.

    Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)

    There are people up and down this country who have received fines way beyond what was imposed on those in Downing Street. The hon. Gentleman has to get his facts straight before he stands up and says they have been treated more harshly. That is simply not accurate.

    Mr Baker

    Of course people up and down the country have been fined, punished and all the rest of it, and the hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that I have stood here and complained about those things far more than he or any Opposition Member has. The point I am making is that the police are going back some months to offences committed some time ago in a way that they are not doing for other people. I think that that is accurate and that my hon. Friend the Minister was nodding along earlier.

    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mims Davies) indicated assent.

    Mr Baker

    Indeed, she nods again.

    When I sat here and listened to the Prime Minister’s words, I was deeply moved. For all that I have said that if he broke the law, acquiesced in breaking the law or lied at the Dispatch Box, he must go, I still felt moved to forgive. But I want to be honest to the House, and to my voters, and say that that spirit of earnest willingness to forgive lasted about 90 seconds of the 1922 Committee meeting, which I am sorry to say was its usual orgy of adulation. It was a great festival of bombast, and I am afraid that I cannot bear such things. This level of transgression and this level of demand for forgiveness requires more than an apology in order to draw a line under it and move on in the way that the Prime Minister sought to do overnight with his interviews.

    I am sorry to be saying that on the record like this, but I am afraid that the Prime Minister and those who advise him need to understand that this is a permanent stone in his shoe. Those of us who want to forgive him have to see permanent contrition, a permanent change of attitude and permanent acknowledgement of people such as my constituent who did not get to see his wife in a care home on their 50th wedding anniversary. I think he saw her only through a window on her 75th birthday. I have been married for only 25 years, but I know what that would mean to me. What am I to say to that man, who did not see his wife before she died? I could say, “You and I are Christian men, and forgiveness is hard.”

    I do not like forgiving the Prime Minister. My spirit is much more full of wrath and vengeance. I feel much more Ezekiel 7:3 about this issue, and I invite everybody to look that up. I do not want to forgive our Prime Minister. The trouble is that I like him and helped him to get where he is—I will come back to that in a moment—and the problem is that I am under a command to forgive.

    I will talk about what the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) said. When I and others went out of our way not only to make my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, but to do our bit—in my case, systematically—to help get an 80-seat majority, of course we did not think that he would exhibit a meticulous grasp of tedious and boring minute rules. But we did know that he had two jobs: he had to get us out of the European Union, which he was fully committed to doing, and he had to defeat the radical leaders of the Labour party. He had to do so in an environment in which everyone was exhausted, we were testing our constitution to destruction, and the internal stability of the United Kingdom was at stake. That is the job we gave him to do, and by goodness he did it. For that I am thankful, and he will live with my thanks forever. He deserves to be lauded in the history books.

    The problem that I now have, having watched what I would say was beautiful, marvellous contrition, is that the Prime Minister’s apology lasted only as long as it took to get out of the headmaster’s study. That is not good enough for me, and it is not good enough for my voters—I am sorry, but it is not. I am afraid that I now have to acknowledge that if the Prime Minister occupied any other office of senior responsibility—if he were a Secretary of State, a Minister of State, a Parliamentary Under-Secretary, a permanent secretary, a director general, a chief executive of a private company or a board director—he would be long gone. The reason that he is not long gone is that it is an extremely grave matter to remove a sitting Prime Minister, and goodness knows I have had something to do with that too. It is an extremely grave matter and an extremely big decision, and it tends to untether history. All of us should approach such things with reverence, awe and an awareness of the difficulty of doing it and the potential consequences.

    That is why I have been tempted to forgive, but I have to say that the possibility of that has now gone. I am sorry, but for not obeying the letter and the spirit of the law—we have heard that the Prime Minister knew what the letter was—the Prime Minister should now be long gone. I will certainly vote for the motion but, really, the Prime Minister should just know that the gig is up.

  • Ed Davey – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    Ed Davey – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    The speech made by Ed Davey, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, in the House of Commons on 21 April 2022.

    I will start by going back to the excellent speech by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). In his concluding remarks, he talked about the economic crisis facing our country and our constituents. He is right to bring that context to the debate today, because it speaks about the need to have a Government with a leader who can command respect.

    With inflation at 7%—its highest rate for 30 years—and rising still, with families facing the deepest fall in their living standards since the 1950s, with the pain of energy bills and rising food prices compounded by the Government’s unfair tax rises, we know that our constituents are facing real hardship. It is not just a cost of living crisis; it is a cost of living emergency. At such a time, the country needs a Government that will be focused on tackling that economic emergency. Crucially, it needs a Government that it can trust—with, as the hon. Gentleman said, moral authority.

    I do not believe this Prime Minister and this Government have that. I believe that the Prime Minister’s behaviour has been profoundly damaging to that trust. He broke the very laws he himself introduced: laws he was telling everyone else to follow, laws that he rightly said were essential to save lives and protect our NHS, laws that forced countless families to make enormous sacrifices.

    I believe it is time that Conservative MPs listened to the British people, the people who kept to the rules and made those sacrifices. For example, a small business owner in Bramhall said:

    “Whilst I had to sit and watch the business I had built up for thirty-five years collapse because my customers and I obeyed the rules, the Prime Minister decided he would ignore them. My family and I will never forgive him and those that treated us like fools.”

    The hon. Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) would do well to reflect on her constituent’s words when she continues to support this lawbreaking Prime Minister. Or there is this message to the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell) from a constituent of hers, who attended his father’s funeral just four days after the Prime Minister’s birthday party:

    “We sat apart. We didn’t hug each other. We weren’t allowed to have a wake to celebrate his life. I just came home and cried that he was gone… When the next election comes around, I will remember.”

    A constituent of the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) said:

    “My parents were unable to attend my uncle’s funeral. This pain will remain with them. The conduct and subsequent untruths of the Prime Minister are disgraceful and only add insult to their hurt.”

    That is the key point. It is not just the fact that the Prime Minister broke his own laws, but that he thought he could get away with it by taking the British people for fools. He stood at the Dispatch Box and told this House and the country, repeatedly, that there was no party—that all guidance and rules were followed at all times in No. 10. The fact that he thought he could get away with such absurd claims—claims that, let us be honest, we all knew were false at the time, and that the police have now confirmed were false—speaks volumes. It says clearly that this Prime Minister takes the British people for granted. He thinks the rules that apply to the rest of us simply do not apply to him.

    As a constituent of the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) says:

    “The Prime Minister seems a man without shame and devoted to one principle only: staying in Number Ten. He is a disgrace to the office of Prime Minister and an insult to the millions of the electorate who played by the book.”

    Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)

    I would be grateful to understand where that quote comes from, because I do not recognise it.

    Ed Davey

    If he has not written to the hon. Gentleman, I will make sure that he does.

    The fact that Conservative MPs have let the Prime Minister get away with all this until now speaks volumes about them. They could have kicked this Prime Minister out of Downing Street 10 months ago and begun to restore the public’s trust and confidence in the Government and in our democracy. Instead, Conservative MPs have so far—

    Stephen Hammond

    On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Unless I misheard the right hon. Gentleman, he has just said that I wrote something—[Interruption.]

    Mr Speaker

    Order. He says he did not, so that clears that mess up.

    Ed Davey

    Instead, Conservative MPs have so far ducked their responsibility, only eroding that public trust and confidence even further.

    The Solicitor General, for example, once said that his red line for resignation from the Government was if there was a “scintilla of a suggestion” of unlawful action. Well, the Prime Minister has been fined by the police, yet the hon. and learned Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) is still drawing his Government salary. By keeping the Prime Minister in his job, Conservative MPs have made themselves guilty by association. They should know that if they vote to kick the can down the road again, if they vote to bend the rules to let one of their own off the hook again, if they do not hold this Prime Minister to account for his law-breaking and lies by voting him out, their constituents will hold them to account at the ballot box.

    Perhaps the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) should listen to the vet in his constituency who says:

    “If I broke the rules and lied about it, I would get struck off. So why hasn’t the Prime Minister been?”

    Lifelong Conservative voters in Guildford are saying they cannot vote for the Conservatives any more. Conservative Members complain about elections; the problem is that if they will not hold this Prime Minister to account, the electorate will have to hold this Prime Minister to account.

    A constituent of the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) tells me that his MP—

    Mr Speaker

    Order. We are mentioning a load of Members and Members’ constituents. I hope the Members were notified that they were going to be namechecked.

    Ed Davey

    I am sorry but I have not notified them. [Interruption.]

    Mr Speaker

    Shh. So I would suggest that we do not name any more unless the Members are aware of it. It is only fair that we do that.

    Ed Davey

    I take your ruling, Mr Speaker. I was quoting from their constituents. That was the point, so that their voices could be heard in this House.

    The past 24 hours have shown that the Government are in total disarray. Conservative MPs are clearly too ashamed to back the Prime Minister but still too complicit to sack him. The people each of us represent know the truth. They know the Prime Minister deliberately misled them and deliberately misled this House. It is an insult to their constituents, especially bereaved families in their seats, and it will be another Conservative stain on our democracy. If Conservative Members fail to sack this Prime Minister, they will leave the British people no choice. In the council elections on 5 May, let alone the next general election, it will become the patriotic duty of every voter to send this Conservative Government a message that enough is enough by voting against them. The Prime Minister has held this House, and the whole country, in contempt for far too long. Now it must be this House’s turn to hold him in contempt.

  • Chris Bryant – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    Chris Bryant – 2022 Speech on Referring Boris Johnson to the Committee of Privileges

    The speech made by Chris Bryant, the Labour MP for Rhondda, in the House of Commons on 21 April 2022.

    I warmly commend the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) for the speech he just gave. He did so with great courage and honesty and, frankly, with the integrity that a lot of us have seen him show in his chairmanship of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. This House knows that serving on and chairing Select Committees is not always easy, because quite often people come to Select Committee meetings with fixed views. They are not all that interested in the evidence that is presented to them and resolutely hold the same view after the meeting that they held at its beginning, even though everything has been proved to be quite the opposite of what they thought. I know from those who serve on the hon. Gentleman’s Committee that he listens to the evidence, and he is a very good parliamentarian as Chair of the Committee.

    It all got a bit religious earlier and I felt like I was back at theological college. Being, I think, the only person in the House who can actually pronounce absolution on anybody, I thought I was suddenly going to get a new job!

    I also warmly commend the work that the Chief Whip has done this week, because he has got us into a much better place today than the House would have been in if he had not made the decisions that, doubtless advised by others, he has made today.

    I had not expected to speak in this debate. I will be very straight with the House—if you see what I mean—in saying that it is sometimes difficult being the Chair of the Committee on Standards and of the Privileges Committee, because one is asked to comment on literally every single Member of the House at some point. I am absolutely scrupulous in making sure that I never comment, in public or in private, on anything that might possibly come to either of the Committees. I did not think this matter would come to the Privileges Committee, which is why I commented on it. Consequently, it is quite right that I recuse myself: I will not take part in the deliberations of the Committee on this matter if this motion is passed in any shape or form. I think I could have done it fairly—I chaired the Standards Committee when we had the Prime Minister before us in respect of a different matter and we disagreed with the Commissioner for Standards and found in the Prime Minister’s favour—but I understand that the House needs to know, absolutely for certain, that the process will be fair. In a strange way, that means that I can actually say something today.

    Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)

    Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

    Chris Bryant

    Oh, all right.

    Joanna Cherry

    I commend the hon. Gentleman for his speech and thorough sense of decency. Does he think the same principle should apply to other members of the Privileges Committee?

    Chris Bryant

    I will say something about the Privileges Committee later but, having recused myself, I do not think it is really for me to tell its members what to do or how to behave.

    One thing I am very keen on is this: I passionately care about Parliament. I believe in Parliament. I believe in democracy. The only way that I can get change for my constituents is through the democratic process. Anything that undermines trust and confidence in Parliament damages my opportunity to do anything useful in my life at all. That is why I always want to urge the House to be extremely careful in these matters of standards and privileges. Each generation of MPs has a responsibility to burnish, not tarnish, the reputation of this House, because we hand democracy on to a future generation, and if we have undermined it, it may not last.

    I draw to the House’s attention the fact that in this Parliament, two MPs have been found guilty of serious offences in a court of law, and another two are awaiting trial; four MPs have been suspended for one day; a Minister was suspended for seven days; seven MPs have been required to apologise to the House for breaches of the code of conduct; three MPs have resigned their seats in the face of convictions; and the Independent Expert Panel has suspended a Member for six weeks for sexual harassment, made another apologise for bullying staff, and found another guilty of such terrible sexual harassment that he resigned his seat before he was sanctioned. All that is without any consideration of whether any right hon. or hon. Member has lied to the House. And it is not yet six months since the Owen Paterson saga, which I do not think covered the House in glory.

    In a very short period of time, two of our colleagues have been murdered, and others are wearing stab vests. We have to take the reputation of the House extremely seriously. We have to burnish it, not tarnish it.

    I have heard Ministers argue, quite rightly, that there must be due process. I say to the House that this is the due process. It always has been the due process. When there has been a claim that a member of the public or a Member of the House might have committed a contempt of Parliament by lying to the House, breaching the confidentiality around a Select Committee report or whatever, the standard process is that it is sent to the Committee of Privileges—or, as it used to be, the Standards and Privileges Committee, and before that the Committee of Privileges—so this is the due process.

    I have absolute confidence in the other members of the Committee and that they will do a good job. They will think very carefully about, as the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) said, making sure that there is a fair hearing. The court of public opinion is not very good at providing a fair hearing, I find; the House should do a great deal better than the court of public opinion. We try to uphold the rule of law—that is one of the duties for all MPs—so it is particularly important that we make sure that there is a fair process. I am sure that the other Committee members will do that.

    Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP) rose—

    Mr Steve Baker rose—

    Chris Bryant

    I am not sure where that came from. I give way to the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker).

    Mr Baker

    The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful and important contribution. This mostly relates to Members of Parliament, but he will know that occasionally somebody feels it necessary to use parliamentary privilege to say in the House things over which those outside the House might otherwise sue for defamation. Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that he will consider whether the public ought to have a right to reply, so that if we use privilege, they have some chance to put their side of the story?

    Chris Bryant

    The hon. Member makes a good point. We have had some discussions about that issue outside the Chamber. The difficulty is that I am not sure that is a matter for the Standards Committee or the Privileges Committee; I think it is a matter for the Committee on Procedure. There is a good argument for putting something in place so that there is a right of reply. I cannot go further, for reasons of which the hon. Gentleman may be aware—

    Mr Speaker

    Order. I do not want to open up that area of debate. I know exactly what is going on—we can leave that part of it there.

    Chris Bryant

    Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

    My second point about fair process is that it is actually quite a high bar that the Privileges Committee will have to consider. As the Leader of the Opposition said earlier, I do not think it is debated that the House was misled. I think even the Prime Minister admits, in effect, that the House was misled. It was said that rules were not broken and it is self-evident that rules were broken, so the House was misled—it got a false impression. The question is whether that was intentional. The Committee will have to devise ways to investigate whether there was an intention.

    Hannah Bardell rose—

    Sir William Cash rose—

    Chris Bryant

    I think I ought to give way to the hon. Lady first.

    Hannah Bardell

    The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent and poignant speech. Does he not find it strange and deeply worrying that we seem to be in a position in which the Prime Minister seemed unable or incapable of following his own rules and his own laws, yet he is using the rules and processes of this place to frustrate the course of, as the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) said, natural justice?

    Chris Bryant

    I would normally agree with the hon. Lady on these kinds of things, and I sort of would have agreed with her last night, but I think we are getting to a better place now. In a sense, sometimes the Back Benchers persuade the Front Benchers of a better course of action—I am looking intently at the Government Chief Whip at the moment.

    As the Clerk advised in the case of whether Stephen Byers had misled the House on a single occasion in 2001:

    “In order to find that Mr Byers committed a contempt in the evidence session of 14 November 2001, the Committee will need to satisfy itself not only that he misled the Sub-Committee, but that he did so knowingly or deliberately.”

    As I said, that is quite a high bar, but it is for the Privileges Committee to decide that.

    Sir William Cash

    I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because what he just said is what I was going to raise with him. The “Ministerial Code” says that it is open to a Minister to correct

    “any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity. Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the Prime Minister”.

    The question rests on “knowingly”, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point clear.

    Chris Bryant

    I think the hon. Gentleman is agreeing with me, so—

    Mr Speaker

    We will leave it at that.

    Chris Bryant

    The only difference I have with the hon. Gentleman is that he was talking about the “Ministerial Code”. The “Ministerial Code” is for the Prime Minister. This House adjudicates on its rules, its code of conduct and contempts of Parliament, so they are different matters. This is about upholding a simple principle around making sure that Ministers speak honestly.

    I will say one other thing about the Committee: it is very important that the six members of the Committee are not pressurised by anybody. Members may not be aware of this, but the Attorney General and the Solicitor General can attend those meetings and take part in the deliberations, but they are not allowed to move amendments or to vote. It is very important that the Committee is able to do its business without being leaned on by anyone.

    My final point is why I think all of this is important. I care far more about what is happening in Ukraine and on the cost of living crisis than about this—far more. I have constituents who are in tears about their finances at the moment. They have absolutely no idea how they will pay their bills, how they will pay the rent, and how they will be able to provide school uniforms and things such as that. They are in tears. All of us have seen the horror in Ukraine. In 2014, I said that if we did not take Putin far more seriously and if we did not impose far stricter sanctions, he would end up coming for the rest of Ukraine. I care far more about those things than I do about this motion today, but they are not alternatives. I would argue that, in the coming months, the Prime Minister may have to come to this House and say that we will have to change our strategy on Russia. We may have to consider offensive weaponry. We may have to consider British troops being put in a place of danger. Similarly, the Prime Minister may have to come to this House and say, “I have to ask the British people to make further sacrifices because the economy is in a very difficult place, and the public finances are in a very difficult place.” At a moment of national and international crisis, we need a leader of completely and utterly unimpeachable moral authority. We do not have that at the moment, not by a long chalk, but that is why these two things are intimately connected and not separate. It is why I believe that this must be referred to the Committee of Privileges.