Business of the House

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

May I begin by thanking my hon. Friend for giving me my Union Jack face mask? He sports a similar one.

I am delighted that a motion to allow a sitting Friday on 12 March is on the Order Paper today. This is intended to allow remaining stages of those private Members’ Bills listed in the motion, including my hon. Friend’s Bill, to take place and I hope that the House will support the motion. There have been a significant number of representations, including from my own constituents, but from MPs as well, to bring these Bills back, so I hope that the motion, the solution, will be welcomed by the House. If the House were to make good progress next Friday, it is my intention to offer a further sitting Friday in order to finalise any of the outstanding Bills listed on the Order Paper and then move forward with Second Readings, if any are put forward. I hope that the Lords will find time to pass these Bills if they pass their Commons stages, but that is, of course, a matter for their Lordships.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP) [V]]

The Leader of the House will agree that democracy is very important, if not a quasi-sacred thing, and that when it is violated by the likes of Lukashenko in Ukraine, and, indeed, Donald Trump in America, we are all rightly repulsed. With that in mind, may I ask the Leader of the House a very simple question: if the Scottish people—or indeed the Welsh people, given the polling in Wales this morning—were to vote for independence at the ballot box, would he respect that choice of the Scottish or, indeed, the Welsh people?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I agree, as I do on many matters actually, with the hon. Gentleman. He is much missed in this Chamber and we hope to see him back physically in the not-too-distant future. It is a duller and quieter place without his regular sedentary interventions. He may have forgotten, but there was a referendum in 2014 in Scotland, which settled the issue. It seems to me that, in the midst of sorting out a pandemic, getting the economy back on its feet and resolving some little local difficulties going on with the leadership of the Scottish National party, it would be reckless to be proposing a referendum at this point.