Referral of Prime Minister to Committee of Privileges

Debate between John McDonnell and Karl Turner

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Karl Turner]

I was about to say that my hon. Friend is a good man—he used to be my boss in the shadow Transport team, Mr Speaker, and he always tries to help me. I do not want to get into the stuff about Mandelson, as my hon. Friend hopes I will. But while I am speaking about the appointment of Mandelson, I will say this: I think that the Prime Minister appointed Mandelson in the national interest. I think he thought Mandelson would go to Washington, do a job in the national interest and deliver for the country. I think that is why he made the appointment.

When it became clear, following the Bloomberg emails, that the appointment was politically difficult for the Government, the Prime Minister again did the right thing by dismissing Mandelson, very properly. Where I think the Prime Minister went wrong was in the shenanigans between those two points: looking around for an excuse for why it had gone wrong. “Just take it on the chin—deal with it!” That is the advice I would have given him, and that is why I am particularly disappointed.

Colleagues who came in at the last general election might be disappointed in me for having the audacity to stand up and say what I happen to believe is the truth. I am sorry if they are not happy with me, but I am here to represent not my interests but the interests of those who elected me. That is what I will always do; whether it is against the policy of a Tory Government or my own Government, I will do what I think is in the interests of my electorate.

Let me warn colleagues about what will happen if we are seen to go through the Lobby to defeat this process. It is a reasonable process; this is not the shenanigans that the Government have suggested in relation to jury trials. This does not involve a single judge, but a jury of peers—impartial, and made up of more Labour MPs than Tory MPs. The Prime Minister has nothing to fear. He ought to do the right thing. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) has suggested, he should have referred himself. That would have saved us all this messing around—debating the point and trying to justify why the referral is a bad idea or having two Committees running alongside each other. Utter nonsense! Get on with it, let it be dealt with and let us move on.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend mentioned my recommendation that the Prime Minister should refer himself. I did that because when someone is under attack like this, they should not run away from the attack; they should face it with confidence. They should argue that if people want to criticise the individual concerned, they should produce the evidence. My hon. Friend knows as well as I do that the Privileges Committee would deal with this matter fairly, and I believe that the Labour party would come out stronger as a result.

[Karl Turner]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. I think I said on Twitter that he rarely gets things wrong—I was accused of being wrong for agreeing with what he said. In the time I have known him, my right hon. Friend has rarely, in my opinion, got it wrong. I think he is absolutely spot on.

I am confident and convinced. I know the Prime Minister and know that he is not a liar. I know for a fact that he would not deliberately mislead. I think he would be exonerated. The trouble we now face is accusations from the electorate that we stopped the inquiry from happening in the first place and that the Prime Minister is guilty through the fact that we avoided it. Once we are in that position, we have a big problem, because you cannot prove something that never happened.

P&O Ferries and Employment Rights

Debate between John McDonnell and Karl Turner

Monday 21st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Before I make my main points, may I just say that I have heard reference to the tonnage tax a couple of times in this debate? Some of us have been dealing with the tonnage tax issue for more than 20 years, and, time and again, we have raised it with successive governments. The fact is that, although tonnage tax has now paid out something like £2.4 billion to shipping companies to enable them to promote and preserve British seafaring jobs, there has actually been a significant loss of seafaring jobs. I resent the fact that P&O has had tonnage tax money and has just brutally and grotesquely sacked 800 workers, as everyone has seen.

I was in Dover on Friday at a demonstration organised by RMT and Nautilus. Of course people were angry about losing their jobs, and of course some RMT members expressed their anger—I thought relatively politely—when MPs who had voted against the legislation to bring about hire and fire protections turned up. Nevertheless, there were two things that came out of the discussions that I had with RMT and Nautilus members. What they wanted from this debate was, first, the reinstatement of the jobs, and, secondly, legislation to prevent this from ever happening again.

I hope for some form of consensus today. Nothing that I have heard from the Secretary of State gives me any reassurance either that the jobs will be reinstated, or that there will be legislation brought forward to prevent this from happening to other workers. I listened in detail to the various actions that the Secretary of State said that the Government were taking. None of them gave me confidence that there was a sense of urgency about reinstating those jobs. I worry that the anger that we have heard expressed today will deflate and that those workers will be forgotten about over the coming weeks and months, and that, I believe, would be a tragedy.

[Karl Turner]

My right hon. Friend and I have campaigned as part of the RMT parliamentary group for many years on the fact that the national minimum wage does not apply on international routes. The Government changed that in June 2020 to apply to UK routes. Will he say something about that?

[John McDonnell]

I will come onto that. That was my second point. My first point is that we need to inject a sense of urgency into this debate. I have listened to what the Government have said, and the Government have listened to what the Opposition have said and to what their own Members have said. I would welcome the opportunity for the Government to meet us on a cross-party basis and that should include the Select Committee Chair, because in the next week—no later than that—I would like to see a report on the legislative changes that need to be brought together to enable this practice to be outlawed completely. We have legislated in emergency situations before.

The second point is that we are not dealing with a normal company. This is a state company; it is effectively owned by the Dubai state and we have a responsibility in international relations to point out to it that we will not tolerate this behaviour. We also have an international responsibility to work with others across Europe and elsewhere to make sure that it is not just our Government making this point, but other Governments working with us who want to uphold basic labour standards. This gives us the opportunity to bring forward an international initiative for which some of us have been arguing for some time.

The third point is that no one should underestimate the historic moment that we are at in terms of industrial relations in this country. No one should underestimate the anger in the wider trade union movement. Working people have woken up to what is happening. The point has been made in this House time and again, that if it can happen to these workers, no one is safe. If we are not seen to be acting responsibly, both as a Government and in this House overall, people will think that parliamentary politics is not working for them. What we will see is working people out there taking it into their own hands to enforce their basic rights to decent employment and security of employment. The responsibility is on us to act. Otherwise, I warn the Government that we will see a wave of industrial unrest, and not just from RMT or Nautilus, but from other unions, because others will see the significance of what is happening to working people.

We can avoid that by bringing forward legislation that installs in law the proper protections that working people need. I believe there should be some acknowledgment now of the seriousness of the situation we are in, and emergency action should be taken. I would like a report back to this House, next Monday and no later, on what action the Government, working cross-party, can bring forward.