Government Policy on the Proceedings of the House

Douglas Ross Excerpts

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

Here we go again: another return to Parliament and another attempt by the Government to play fast and loose with the democratic arrangements of the House. This is clearly becoming a pattern, and the nation is starting to get really concerned and anxious about their casual disregard of many parliamentary conventions and scrutiny.

First, we had the horror of the grotesque Henry VIII powers in the repeal Bill. Then we had the Government fixing the Standing Committees of the House so that they could have a majority in each and every single one of them. Now we have all this nonsense about Opposition day debates and what the Government will or will not do in response to them. I think that I have identified the problem with this particular Government: they cannot accept their status as a minority Government. That is the basis of what we have here. They seem to be doing everything possible to try to deny that new reality, but the harder that they do that, the worse it gets for our democratic proceedings and parliamentary structures.

The Government have 317 Members out of a total of 650 Members—48.7% of the membership of the House. They are clearly a minority Government. Instead of fighting that reality, why do they not simply embrace it and accept it, then we can all get on with our business normally, with a minority Government trying to govern in this country?

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way, particularly as he is speaking about minority Governments which his party now is in Scotland. When the Scottish National party had a majority Government in Scotland, it passed the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012. More than a year ago, when it was in a minority Government, it was defeated by all the opposition parties in a vote and called on to repeal the Act. Can he tell me the status of that? Has his party repealed the Act, or is it failing to respect the Scottish Parliament vote?

[Pete Wishart]

I am really grateful to the hon. Gentleman for mentioning that point. I was going to come on to that, because it is really important to understand how minority Governments respond to defeats in Parliament. The right thing to do is what the Scottish Government do, which is to review, reflect and consult. Let me cite one issue as an example. We were defeated on fracking. What did we do? We did not attempt to ignore that vote. We consulted, reviewed and came back to Parliament with a ban on fracking. That is the responsible behaviour of a minority Government. I will take no lecture from the hon. Gentleman whose party’s commitment to democratic decisions extends to the hon. Member for Angus (Kirstene Hair) not even voting in the European Union referendum.

There are certain things that a party has to learn when it is in a minority situation in Parliament. The first lesson is that, sometimes, Governments get beat. They get beat here and they get beat in the Scottish Parliament. That is a feature of minority Government and it is alright—it happens. It happens normally in Parliaments right across Europe. This Government should not overly fret about it. They paid £1.25 billion to the Democratic Unionist party to ensure that they had a majority in the event of a threat to their existence. This House must also recognise how we can represent and reflect the democratic will of the people of this country. Sometimes I enjoy being lectured by Conservative Back Benchers about parliamentary sovereignty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

I contribute to this debate from quite a privileged position, as someone who has served both my Parliaments: as a Member of the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood in Edinburgh; and as a Member of our Parliament here in Westminster in London. Of course, in both Parliaments, I have served under minority Governments, so I am well placed to speak about how Oppositions deal with debates in both Chambers.

We hear a lot from our Scottish National party colleagues about minority government here at Westminster, but very little about the fact that their party is in minority government in Holyrood—we heard a couple of sentences about it today from the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), but not much before that. It is therefore worth repeating that Nicola Sturgeon went into the last Scottish parliamentary elections with a majority and came out with a minority, largely because the number of Scottish Conservative MSPs more than doubled—from 15 to 31.

The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire said many interesting things. After 13 minutes of criticising and attacking the Government and Conservative Back Benchers, he told us that he was being helpful and consensual. That was the only helpful thing he told us, because up until that point it did not seem that he was being particularly helpful or consensual. He also said—I wrote this down because I was very interested—that nobody expects the Government to change policy after being defeated in an Opposition day debate. That was quickly followed by an intervention from the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), who disagreed entirely. That just shows the confused position among the Opposition parties in today’s debate. It is perhaps because the party of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire has a minority Government in Scotland that he does not believe that Governments should change policy due to a defeat in a Chamber.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

It is nice to hear about the Scottish example, but I am interested to know whether the hon. Gentleman thinks that the Government should change course when they are defeated in a Chamber, instead of just hearing him attack the SNP, which I do not have much truck with either.

[Douglas Ross]

I am a Scottish Conservative Member representing a Scottish constituency, so if the hon. Gentleman bears with me, I will speak about Scottish issues in the House of Commons. I will also speak about Governments being defeated when this Government are defeated. They have not been defeated in this House, but the party of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire has been defeated. I want to come on to the point that I tried to make when I intervened on his speech. Hansard will show that I asked clearly about the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012, but that the hon. Gentleman never once mentioned that piece of legislation in response.

[Pete Wishart]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Douglas Ross]

Yes, if the hon. Gentleman is now going to tell me what has happened to that piece of legislation that needed to be repealed.

[Pete Wishart]

It is interesting that all that Theresa’s Scottish Tories ever do is to get on their feet and talk about the Scottish Parliament. In case it has evaded the hon. Gentleman’s attention, he was elected to serve in this House. As for the 2012 Act, a review is under way to examine hate crime legislation in response to the vote in the Scottish Parliament. That is how a minority Government should respond to a defeat in a Parliament.

[Douglas Ross]

I am sorry, but as the hon. Gentleman has totally misunderstood what is happening in Scotland with this piece of legislation, it is important that I provide a potted history of what happened. It was introduced by a majority SNP Government in 2011 with no support from the Opposition parties. Legal experts told them that it was wrong, a senior judge went on to say that the legislation was “mince”, and then a Labour MSP’s consultation on repealing the legislation attracted 3,000 responses, 70% of which said that the Act should be repealed. What is happening now? I will tell you. In November last year—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman held out the prospect for the House that he would provide a potted history of what had happened in relation to the relevant piece of Scottish legislation. I think that he has somewhat stretched the definition and meaning of the word “potted”, and what I am politely indicating to the hon. Gentleman is that he should gravitate towards the thrust of the debate, rather than occupy the tramlines.

[Douglas Ross]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. You unfortunately stopped me mid-thrust because I was about to come to that point. The final element came in November last year, when I led a debate on the matter in the Scottish Parliament, which then voted to repeal the 2012 Act. The Opposition parties voted for the repeal, but nothing has happened in the past year. The point that I am trying to get across is that people cannot state that what the Opposition parties say here must be respected when they do not respect what such parties say in another Parliament, so I will take no lectures from the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire about that.

Parliament gave a view on the two motions that prompted today’s debate. There was a full discussion, with Government Members matching Opposition Members speaker for speaker, and the House did not dissent from the motions. The House expressed an opinion. Our constituents would rather that we focused on the crucial issues that are coming up later this evening instead of spending hours discussing procedural matters. Our constituents would be better served by our getting on to those debates, which I look forward to listening to in the near future.