Strengthening Standards in Public Life

Hannah Bardell Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

Absolutely. We have a duty, an obligation and a responsibility to make sure we have the best possible standards in the unelected Chamber. It is the Prime Minister who appoints Members to the House of Lords. It is lists drawn up by party leaders that give those appointments an opportunity to be placed there. That has to stop. I know this House likes the place up there for some reason, watching people dressed up like Santa Claus prance around the place, but they are put there because they are donors, cronies or placemen. It is an appalling abuse, a corrupt House, and we should be looking at abolishing it, not putting more people in because they happen to give the Tory party £3 million.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and congratulate him on a stunning speech, as ever, on this issue. Does he agree that it is long past time since we banned the practice of Members who have been rejected at the ballot box paying their way into an upper Chamber? Does he agree that in an independent Scotland there will be no unelected upper Chamber and that all members of our legislature will be democratically elected?

[Pete Wishart]

I agree absolutely and utterly. There is no place in any democratic system for people who are put there by a Prime Minister just because they happened to give his party £3 million. We would never accept that in an independent Scotland.

That brings me to my next point—I am grateful to my hon. Friend—because the people of Scotland are observing this and they do not like what they are seeing. It is just making them more determined that we get away from this sleazy, corrupt, rotten cesspit of a place and start to be self-governing in our nation of Scotland. They are embarrassed by this place and, unfortunately, Scotland has not been left unscathed by the behaviour of Members of Parliament.