Privilege
Debate between Pete Wishart and David Davis(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
I beg to move,
That the matter of the actions and subsequent conduct of the hon Member for Ochil and South Perthshire in relation to correspondence from the Speaker on a matter of privilege be referred to the Committee of Privileges.
I have been advised by the Clerks that this is a very narrow motion, so I will stick strictly and exclusively to the matter at hand. Before I come to the substantive motion, however, I want to say something to those members of the public who may think that this is an arcane or even abstruse issue.
Ever since Speaker Lenthall told King Charles I that
“I have neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak in this place, but as the House is pleased to direct me,”
the Speaker has been the spokesman, champion and protector of the Members and institutions of this place, as well as being the impartial arbiter of our proceedings. If hon. Members think that that is just a piece of ancient history, they ought to consider more recent times. Mr Speaker’s more recent predecessors have been criticised on issues of impartiality or for failing to protect Members: for example, Mr Speaker Martin’s failure to protect my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) was highly controversial at the time and very important.
As for upholding the rights of Back Benchers and Opposition Members, we need only look at Mr Speaker’s fierce criticism of the Government during the statement yesterday, when he upheld our rights. It is therefore vital for Members to protect the integrity, impartiality and apolitical nature of the Speaker’s office. That point is clearly recognised in “Erskine May”—hardly a polemical document—at paragraph 15.14, which states that
“reflections on the character of the Speaker or accusations of partiality in the discharge of their duties”
are a punishable offence. “Erskine May” also recognises that a Member’s behaviour and conduct outside this House count towards that.
I turn to the substantive motion. Following an appearance by my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries) before the Select Committee on Digital, Culture, Media and Sport while she was Secretary of State, the Committee opened an investigation into several claims that she made, but ultimately it decided against any action. The Committee as a whole published a special report—[Interruption.] [Hon. Members: “He’s turned up.”] Oh, right.
The Committee as a whole published a special report, which said:
“we may have sought a referral to the Privileges Committee but, as her claims have not inhibited the work of the Committee and she no longer has a position of power over the future of Channel 4, we are, instead, publishing this Report to enable the House, and its Members, to draw their own conclusions.”
It is crucial in this matter to remember that the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (John Nicolson) sits on that Committee. He did not ask for a Division before the report was published; he did not vote against it; he did not publish a dissenting opinion on that report. Instead, he wrote to Mr Speaker asking him to give precedence to matters reported on by the Committee, even though the Committee itself was not seeking such precedence. As would be expected, Mr Speaker did the usual thing, and—in his own words—decided to
“respect the Committee’s assessment of the situation.”—[Official Report, 23 November 2022; Vol. 723, c. 291.]
After Mr Speaker had replied to the hon. Member privately, as is the convention with privilege issues, the hon. Member took to Twitter. He brandished a copy of Mr Speaker’s letter in his video. He broke all the conventions on the privacy of Speakers’ correspondence on privilege, and disclosed a partial and partisan account of Mr Speaker’s letter. He said on Twitter:
“He’s considered my letter, but he’s decided to take no further action.”
In doing so, he implied that it was Mr Speaker’s unfettered decision not to refer the matter to the Privileges Committee. Nowhere in his filmed statement did he tell his followers that Mr Speaker was following normal procedure by accepting the will of the DCMS Committee—I imagine that is why Mr Speaker described his action last week as giving a “partial and biased account” of the correspondence—and nowhere in his statement did he tell his followers that it was he himself who sat on that Committee and signed off the conclusions.
All of us in this House have a duty to uphold its rules and institutions, but by knowingly breaching the confidentiality of the Speaker’s correspondence, the hon. Member has done the opposite. This is a clear breach of our rules. The proper response after Mr Speaker’s censure of him for his behaviour last week was for the hon. Member to accept the seriousness of his actions, apologise properly to the House, and delete the offending tweets. If he had done so, I imagine that would have been the end of the matter; indeed, I would not have made my point of order on the day. However, he failed to apologise, and instead compounded his misdemeanour. Taking to Twitter once again, he claimed that he
“offered no apology as there was no misrepresentation.”
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr Davis
He claimed that he
“didn’t ‘release’ the Speaker’s letter. I summarised it entirely fairly.”
That is untrue. He misled the country by deliberately withholding the way in which this decision had been arrived at and his part in it. He also retweeted an account that was directly critical of Mr Speaker, saying that Mr Speaker’s statement had been merely “Ermine pursuing theatrics” and that Mr Speaker was placing his
“integrity above that of parliament”.
Mr Davis
The hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire had again compounded his misdemeanour by deliberately attempting to undermine the impartiality and integrity of the Speaker’s office. It is the role of the Speaker of this House to protect Members and stand up for its Back Benchers, and it is the Members’ duty, on our part, to uphold the dignity of the Speaker’s office.
Mr Davis
I do not believe any of this conduct to be appropriate for a Member of this House. However, that is not for me to judge, as a single, ordinary Member, which is why this is not a motion to condemn, but a motion to pass the matter to the Privileges Committee of the House of Commons.
Article 50
Debate between Pete Wishart and David Davis(7 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Davis
As I said on the costs, I will provide the numbers; there is no problem with doing that. I would make the point, however, that we did not bring the case, of which the cost is a direct outcome. I am not one of those—[Interruption.] Animal noises from the Opposition notwithstanding, I am not one of those who criticise the people who brought the case; I think they brought a very important constitutional case, which is why I said, whatever it cost, it was worth doing. Let no one say to the Government, however, “Why did you appeal the case?”. We did so because a massively important constitutional issue was at stake, and my hon. Friend is right that we should all take it very seriously, take it as the status of our law today and obey it accordingly.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Scotland is supposed to have the most powerful devolved Parliament in the world, and the Scotland Acts tell us now that it is permanent and that the Sewel convention is embedded in law, but we now know, of course, that the Scotland Acts are barely worth the vellum they are written on. The Secretary of State says he is listening to Scotland—that is great, he has said it several times today—but when will he act? If he does not accept the very reasonable proposals we put to him, the Scottish people will quickly ask what the point is of our being here at all.
Mr Davis
If I remember correctly, the Supreme Court said of the Sewel convention that it was not for the judges to decide. I listened last week as the Scottish Government Minister presented at great length the arguments in their paper. As I said earlier to one of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues, there are bits we disagree with and bits we absolutely agree with—for me, the most obvious one is the protection of employment law, which I take very seriously and on which we are absolutely in the same place. I and others on the Joint Ministerial Committee discussed with the Minister the issue of devolution, and the clear point was that no existing devolved powers were to be retracted. Of course, that is not going to happen, but we also have to think, in rational terms and in the interests of the Scottish people and citizens of the UK more widely, about where the best place is to make decisions. In most cases, I would prefer to devolve powers, but in some circumstances that is not practical. We have to do what is right for the people, not what suits our political interest.
Exiting the European Union
Debate between Pete Wishart and David Davis(7 years, 7 months ago)
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Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
The statement was 15 minutes of meaningless waffle from a clueless Tory Government who have absolutely no plan for this accidental Brexit. I say to the Secretary of State that there is no point in just dictating to the people of Scotland when it comes to Brexit. Some 62% of the Scottish people voted to remain within the European Union, along with every single one of the Scottish local authorities. How should their views now be progressed?
Mr Davis
And 1 million Scots voted to leave. Despite the partisan use of this argument by the Scottish National party for its own interests, the simple truth is that the Scottish view on whether it should have independence has changed not one jot. That is an answer to the hon. Gentleman’s waffle.
Iraq Inquiry Report
Debate between Pete Wishart and David Davis(8 years ago)
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Mr Davis
My right hon. Friend will forgive me if I do not follow him down his comparison between Dr Strangelove and past Prime Ministers, but he is right in one respect: the most important element of this is what we learn from our mistakes. However, there are also issues of accountability and closure, which I will return to in a moment.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I am reluctant to interrupt, because I am very much enjoying the powerful case that the right hon. Gentleman is making, but I invite him to ignore the representations of his colleague, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), because this war is bound up with one key individual: Tony Blair. For ever and a day, he will be associated with this particular war. It was personalised around the personality of that Prime Minister. As far as I am concerned, he could have a tattoo across his forehead reading “Iraq”, such is his legacy. This will be a comment and a statement about his day. I was in this House when we voted to go to war, as was the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), and I had to listen to the nonsense and drivel that was that former Prime Minister’s case for war. Please let us make sure that where blame is to be apportioned, it is apportioned rightly.
Mr Davis
I will come back to this issue in the latter part of my speech. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) and I have a very dear common friend who thinks that Mr Blair should be at The Hague, so there is a range of opinion on this, but to come to that conclusion today would be to pre-empt the report. I do not intend to do that, but I do intend to turn to the issue of accountability in a minute.
English Votes for English Laws
Debate between Pete Wishart and David Davis(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Davis
I am afraid that I could not disagree more. The simple truth is that we have made it down the centuries with an unwritten constitution that has existed because of the respect given to it on both sides of the House. That has fragmented in the past decade or two. I do not want to have a circumstance where the rules of operation adversely affect the democratic rights of our citizens. By the way, we have been talking all the time about the democratic rights, or standards, of MPs and whether we have one or two classes of MP, but what matters is that we have one class of citizen. I do not want that to be subject to the vagaries of any future Government.
Pete Wishart
I am pleased that the right hon. Gentleman has picked up on the issue of legal challenge. The reason we are having Speaker certification as opposed to legislation is to put the matter beyond legal challenge, so there will be no opportunity for the citizens he describes to challenge decisions that are made in this House. Surely he, as someone who takes an interest in this, must think that that is thoroughly wrong.
Mr Davis
It is wrong, for the reasons I described. As the hon. Gentleman well knows, I take the view that Governments should be subject to the law of the land and subject to courts. I am less happy with the idea that the courts could rewrite our constitution in a way that we do not see fit.