Tim Roca
MP for Macclesfield · Labour · United Kingdom
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his advice. If he gives me time, he may find that comes later in my speech. We should not allow Russia to make us talk ourselves into a place of weakness.”
“There is a significant difference between spending 2.8% in 2028, 2.9% in 2029 and 3% in 2030, and remaining broadly flat and trying to make a leap—if we can prove that we can do that—at the end of that spending period.”
“I agree with the right hon. Member, but I am not sure whether his point is relevant to the one I was making about the broad context of defence procurement. There has been great cross-party consensus on what we are doing with Ukraine, and we should ensure that that continues. I also want to comment on the defence nuclear enterprise.”
“My hon. Friend makes the point well. Indeed, in a recent interview my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) talked about how the recent attacks on Iran had destroyed a huge propaganda apparatus, which had contributed to 3% of total nationalist propaganda for Scottish separation from the United Kingdom.”
“Every capability we field, every production line we expand and every drone we manufacture add to our deterrence, and that is incredibly important. At the beginning of the debate we talked about the credibility of getting to where we need to be. To be straightforward, it is my belief that we need to reach 3% of GDP by 2030.”
“I do not intend to focus on that too much, but I am sure that others will make the point about the decline in the size of the Army over the past 14 years, the decline in the size of the Air Force, and about the frigate fleet—we talk about the frigate gap—and what happened to frigate and destroyer construction.”
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“I do not intend to focus on that too much, but I am sure that others will make the point about the decline in the size of the Army over the past 14 years, the decline in the size of the Air Force, and about the frigate fleet—we talk about the frigate gap—and what happened to frigate and destroyer construction. We should remember that the threat has not just arrived. There was not a meaningful increase in defence spending after the annexation of Crimea, and there was not a meaningful increase after Putin violated Minsk I or Minsk II. Indeed, there was not a significant increase in defence spending after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. That context is really important.”
“I thank the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) for securing the debate. I was proud to join him, the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) and Field Marshal Lord Richards of Herstmonceux in creating the all-party parliamentary group on rearmament. We are discussing a topic that we all agree on: the threat that faces the country and the necessity for us to rearm. I had hoped that the tone of the debate would have been slightly less political. I feel like we have had a little bit of amnesia as to how we have got to where we are.”
“That cost us many years and has cost us many billions of pounds that we could be spending today on conventional forces. It means that we have tired Trident submarines heading out to sea beyond when they should be doing so, and we have crews on extended patrols of 150, 200 or 250 days. That is the cost of the decisions made at that time. I want to talk a little about ensuring that we do not fall into Russia’s trap. Of course, there is a significant threat from Russia, which is both conventional and hybrid—”
“I agree with the right hon. Member, but I am not sure whether his point is relevant to the one I was making about the broad context of defence procurement. There has been great cross-party consensus on what we are doing with Ukraine, and we should ensure that that continues. I also want to comment on the defence nuclear enterprise. Under the DIP, we will be spending £45 billion over the forthcoming period on the incredibly important nuclear deterrent. It is right that we do that, but that amounts to 25% of the defence budget. The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) is in his place. The other week, I was reading his arguments at the time of the coalition Government, urging them to press ahead with the renewal of Trident, which they did not do.”
“We have to remember that Russia’s greatest weapon these days tends to be psychological. It wants us to believe that it cannot be beaten, that resistance is useless and that despite four years of attritional warfare and 1.4 million casualties, it somehow remains an unstoppable European military power that could overwhelm Britain and her allies, but it is not.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his advice. If he gives me time, he may find that comes later in my speech. We should not allow Russia to make us talk ourselves into a place of weakness. As the then Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff put it to the Defence Committee, “If the British Army was asked to fight tonight, it would fight tonight.” Our readiness is not where we would want it to be, but that is not the same as saying that Britain is defenceless. I am not trying to be complacent; I am just making the point that we have excellent armed services and excellent people in uniform, and we should not talk as if those things do not exist. What we are saying is that we need more. In Ukraine, we have watched a country that is considerably smaller than our own, with far fewer resources, resist Russian aggression with extraordinary determination.”
“There is a significant difference between spending 2.8% in 2028, 2.9% in 2029 and 3% in 2030, and remaining broadly flat and trying to make a leap—if we can prove that we can do that—at the end of that spending period. The Government deserve credit for changing the direction of travel from what it was in the past, but events have accelerated and so we need to accelerate our rearmament beyond those plans. There is no shortage of priorities, and the DIP was a significant document, as colleagues have described. I share their concerns about some of the autonomy in the Royal Navy. It is unlikely that we will have the new ships designed, tested and deployed within 10 years, and there will have to be service life extensions for the Type 45s. I worry about the lack or absence of—”
“Those are significant commitments that need to be recognised, but unfortunately, I am worried that they do not meet the strategic moment that we are at. The pace at which Russia might reconstitute, the lessons that are emerging from Ukraine over technology, the threats in the far east to our allies and our interests, and the demands placed upon us by NATO to meet certain targets mean that we have to move faster than the Government currently say. A spending review published in 2027 could, in theory, postpone most of the increase until the final year of the period. That would technically fulfil the commitment, but it would not reflect the urgency of the moment.”
“Every capability we field, every production line we expand and every drone we manufacture add to our deterrence, and that is incredibly important. At the beginning of the debate we talked about the credibility of getting to where we need to be. To be straightforward, it is my belief that we need to reach 3% of GDP by 2030. That is the minimum needed for us to show that we are committed to our plans and to our NATO allies in having the capabilities that we need. In fairness to the Government, they have made significant progress and we will be at 2.7% in 2027-28, which is the highest defence spend in three decades. The defence budget will also be 27% higher in real terms than it was at the start of the Parliament.”
“My hon. Friend makes the point well. Indeed, in a recent interview my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) talked about how the recent attacks on Iran had destroyed a huge propaganda apparatus, which had contributed to 3% of total nationalist propaganda for Scottish separation from the United Kingdom. It is an important point. Following on from that, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Selly Oak made the important point about strength being a foundation of deterrence. We are trying to deter war, not just by having capable armed forces but by having industrial capacity, well-stocked armouries, cutting-edge technology and a properly funded plan—because the stronger we are, the less likely conflict becomes.”
“The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point and, eventually, we will have to look at the Type 31 hull as a possibility. Maybe the Minister will comment on contingency plans if continuous capability sustainment does not develop as it should. On the lack of commitments around ballistic missile defence, we are now an outlier in Europe in terms of air defences. Many countries in Europe—Spain, Germany, France, and so on—have Patriot or SAMP/T—”
“Will the Minister tell us a little more about what steps he is taking with allies to keep the two-state solution alive? What sanctions and penalties might be imposed should these settlements proceed?”
“I express my concern about the tone taken by the shadow Minister at the beginning of the urgent question. Netanyahu could not have been clearer about his point of view that there should not be a Palestinian state, and the plans for the E1 area near East Jerusalem are just the continued manifestation of the intention to entirely destroy the viability of a Palestinian state. Taken together with clear evidence of war crimes, it is obvious to all that this Israeli Government are not serious about a sustainable peace for the region. As hon. Members have said numerous times, I fear that Netanyahu is pressing ahead with this in order to shore up his support ahead of critical elections that could see fresh leadership in Israel, which we would all like to see.”
“Will the Leader of the House join me in welcoming the GMB union’s campaign to protect the 130 low-paid Churchill Cleaning staff in this place from redundancy? Does he agree that Parliament must remain clean for all, and that the Government’s policy of ending the outsourcing of cleaning jobs should also be adopted by the parliamentary authorities?”
“Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield (Mims Davies), questions are fine, but the tone of that contribution will have disappointed a great many people who will now consider that the Conservative party is, in effect, a fair-weather friend when it comes to fighting for equality. Will the Minister join me in recognising the fact that it is a Labour Government who are finally bringing this Bill forward and will get it on the statute book?”
“I congratulate the Minister on all the hard work she has done to bring this Bill forward—she should be incredibly proud of herself. It is particularly timely in the month of Pride. In 2026, we still have people who are questioning the need for Pride, including Reform councils and councillors. It is an important reminder that despite the progress we have made, there is still a long way further to go. As colleagues have said, this Bill has been in four Speeches from the Throne since 2018, and successive Conservative Prime Ministers have promised it and not delivered. To respond to the contribution made by the shadow Minister, the hon.”
“My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech on behalf of his constituents, and he has mentioned dentistry challenges in his area. Like other Members, he has talked about the contract, which currently rewards activity rather than prevention. Is that one of the changes that he would like to see?”
“As the Minister will know, the proposed route runs through Macclesfield, so I have a number of constituents and communities who are concerned about it. They have questions that we should accept in good faith—questions about the route, about public safety, which the Minister is coming to, and about the environmental impact. Does he agree that they deserve proper and full answers to those questions? There should be a proper and full consultation.”
“The Minister is making a powerful point about the investments that the Government are making in green and clean energy. In Macclesfield, families are suffering from high energy costs at the pumps or in making sure that their homes are warm when they need to be. Does he agree that tackling climate change, investing in clean energy and bringing down bills come together as a coherent argument, and that we should all be making the case for that?”
“It lives in Stride for Pride, in every rainbow flag on every shop on Chestergate in Macclesfield; it lives in the fact that I as Macclesfield’s MP am standing here today openly and proudly as myself—the first openly gay Macclesfield MP—because we all stand on the shoulders of activists like those who organised the protests and made this world possible. In a society that still, in too many ways, educates people to be ashamed, pride is the political response, and it has never been clearer that the need for it is great. I am proud to represent Macclesfield, proud of our extraordinary LGBT community, and proud to say to every LGBT person watching or listening: we see you, we are with you, and we will keep fighting.”
“Let me finish on a point to which the debate on Pride should always return. I was attending the wedding of some very close gay friends in Argentina some years ago, and I came across the words of Carlos Jáuregui, a great Argentine LGBT activist: “En una sociedad que nos educa para la vergüenza, el orgullo es una respuesta política”. In other words, in a society that educates us to be ashamed, pride is a political response. Pride began as a protest, an act of resistance by people who have been told by law and by society that they did not deserve dignity. That history lives in every parade, including the one that will set off through Macclesfield in a few weeks’ time and wind its way down to the marketplace.”
“I have genuine sympathy with their intention. Many are formidable campaigners for LGBT rights, and I respect them greatly. I have to be honest, however; the Supreme Court judgment is clear, and statutory guidance has to reflect the law as it stands. My view and my assessment is that the genuine route forward for those of us who want clearer and stronger protections for trans people—I count myself firmly in that group—is either new or amended legislation from Parliament, or a future legal challenge that resets the framework. Indeed, we have to accept that the Supreme Court judgment is making the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the certificates increasingly close to symbolic, with little practical force. That cannot have been Parliament’s intention when it passed that legislation.”
“As I understand it—I am not an expert—the suggestion from the briefing that some of us attended with the EHRC yesterday is that it would not be possible for a club or an association to decide to be open only to women, including trans women, and they would be challenged on that. Using the prevention of “discomfort or distress” of other service users as a legitimate aim of exclusion, combined with guidance suggesting that concern about a person’s sex may be evidenced by their “appearance” or “behaviour”, creates a subjective, appearance-based threshold that, frankly, is an open invitation to harass anyone, trans or cis, who does not conform to stereotypes. That is not clarity and I worry that it could lead to real harm. Colleagues have tabled an early-day motion calling for the guidance to be disapproved.”
“As has already been referenced, the Government’s equality impact assessment warns of a “disproportionate risk of violence and sexual assault” towards trans women if they are directed to use male services. That is not a campaigning document; it is the Government’s own analysis, and it deserves an answer. I am also worried, as the hon. Member for Luton North has pointed out, about the practical confusion on the ground for businesses in my constituency, including cafés, restaurants and leisure centres. The guidance states simultaneously that members of the public should not challenge one another on the basis of sex, while also suggesting that where someone is asked to confirm their sex, it should be done “sensitively”. Most reasonable business owners will be bewildered.”
“I want to be clear about where I stand: I support women’s rights to single-sex spaces and services, as set out in the Equality Act. Those rights are real, they matter and I defend them. However, I disagree with attempts to make them mutually exclusive with the dignity and safety of trans people; both can and must be protected. I give credit to the Secretary of State, with regards to the guidance, for the engagement that she has had with MPs on all sides of the House. I know that she faced an incredible amount of pressure from all sorts of directions. However, I have heard from constituents, trans constituents and parents with trans children who are genuinely frightened that, without clearer protections, they will face more exclusion and harassment, and we will all see more expensive and exhaustive legal battles.”
“To think that in 2015 we were first—what an incredible thing to have been proud of—and then we fell 22 places in the space of a decade. The hon. Member also pointed out that on the issue of trans rights and legal gender recognition, we are now ranked 45th out of 49 European nations. We have not gone backwards by accident. I have said before in this place that political will matters, as do legal frameworks and words laid before this House. Transphobic hate crimes have increased since 2016, according to Home Office data. Some of that is because of better reporting, but some is undoubtedly due to the toxic atmosphere being directed towards such a small minority. It is real fear, real isolation and real violence felt by people who are simply trying to live as themselves.”
“That is not exclusive to the Labour party, but fantastic progress has been made under Labour Governments, including the repeal of section 28, the introduction of civil partnerships and the adoption rights that we heard of earlier. I will talk about things causing real concern, which colleagues have already raised ably this afternoon: the concerns that trans people have. Trans constituents have written to me with real worry since the draft code of practice was laid before this House in May. It is my duty to represent their concerns honestly and clearly, because they deserve that, and I know that the Government will want to hear them. First, let me start with where we stand internationally. The hon. Member for Guildford pointed out that we have dropped significantly in the ILGA-Europe rainbow map.”
“The need for that solidarity has never been more urgent than it is right now. Before I turn to some of my concerns, let me say a little of the good. I am proud to have supported my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor) in her campaign to make LGBT+ hate crimes aggravated offences that carry tougher sentences; I am proud that the Government are delivering financial compensation to LGBT+ veterans who have suffered abuse, prejudice and dismissal under the awful historical armed forces ban; and I am proud that the Government will bring in a ban on conversion practices. I eagerly look forward to voting for it. It hangs on a timeline and a history of fantastic progress by the Labour party.”
“They are the reason that Macclesfield Pride happens. They give their time, energy, creativity and passion year after year—entirely voluntarily—to create something genuinely wonderful for our community. Parliament should know what they do, and I am proud to say their names in the Chamber today. I know that other colleagues will similarly have activists in their area who they are equally proud of. That spirit is also on display at our regular Stride for Pride, which is organised by the wonderful Mika and Dan of the Yas Bean coffee shop. It is a community event that brings people together in solidarity as much as celebration. Solidarity is not incidental to the LGBT+ story; it is central to it. Our community has always known that we show up for each other—across differences, across generations—because sometimes there is nobody else.”
“That transformation has happened not by chance but because of the courage of LGBT+ people who stayed visible and refused to disappear and because of local communities that chose to embrace them. Nowhere is that spirit more alive than in MaccPride, our town’s own Pride festival, which has grown from an idea in 2018 into a joyous, colourful celebration in the heart of our town centre. I want to take a moment to thank the extraordinary people who make it happen: Sophie Armitt and Olivia Clare, Andrew Angus-Whiteoak, Kyle Frost, Kerry McKeith, Jo Stratford, Paula Parkes—the incredibly important parade co-ordinator—Rachel Wisson, Serena Lavin, Jenni Duggan, the amazing Stella Wake-Bennett, whose wife Sarah Bennett-Wake was the first openly gay mayor of Macclesfield and is a friend, Charlie Higgins Bos, Pippa Dean, Mikki Tiamo, and Jynx Noctem.”
“It means something to the young person in Macclesfield who wonders whether someone like them can ever hold a position like this. It means something to the person who grew up in our area, as I did, and was never sure that they belonged. Representation matters, visibility matters, and I and others are humbled to carry that responsibility, including the Minister, who started this debate so ably. When I speak about Pride, I am speaking not as an observer but as someone who knows what it is to need it. Macclesfield has given me every reason to be proud, because the town and rural communities I represent today are warmer, more open and more welcoming than the ones I knew growing up.”
“It is a privilege to follow such excellent contributions to this debate, particularly those from the hon. Member for Guildford (Zöe Franklin) and my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen), who I thought gave an absolutely cracking speech. This afternoon I want to talk about the LGBTQ+ community—my community—in Macclesfield and across the country, and about the very real challenges that our community now faces, but I want to begin with something personal. I am proud to be the Member of Parliament for Macclesfield, and I am equally proud to be the first openly gay Member of Parliament that my constituency has ever sent to this House. I say that not to draw attention to myself, but because I know what it means.”
“The Minister is being incredibly generous with his time. As an aside, I think many hon. Members in this place—those on the Conservative Benches at least—would like to go back to the 19th century. It is clear that officials have done a huge amount of work with regard to this process. Will the Minister say a little bit about the independent King’s Counsel, and what assurances it has provided that the Government are complying with the Humble Address?”
“This was a woman who at nine years old had worked in one of the Macclesfield silk mills, so she knew in her bones what it meant to go without. It was not an abstract political cause for her; it was a real calling. Mary went on to become Macclesfield’s first female magistrate, its first female alderwomen and almost its first female mayor. We owe it to her memory, and to the countless ordinary women like her whose quiet, relentless solidarity held communities together, to speak of them in debates such as this one today.”
“It reminds us that many of the freedoms and liberties we enjoy today hang on a timeline of solidarity that was won by the trade union movement. I am proud to be a Labour MP, from a party that was born from the trade union movement, as I know are many of my colleagues. I want to take a moment to honour a woman whose name deserves to stand alongside others who might be mentioned today: Mary Turpin of Macclesfield. When the marchers passed through Macclesfield on their way to London during the general strike, she did not watch from the sidelines—she got stuck in. She organised soup kitchens, set up feeding centres for children and prepared thousands of family parcels for the locked-out miners in Biddulph.”
“I am really grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner) for securing this important Adjournment debate. I was very excited a few weeks ago when he told me that he had secured it. He has spoken really eloquently about the importance of the general strike to labour history. I was reminded, when he told me he was applying for the debate, of the quote from AJ Cook, who said: “Not a penny off the day, not a minute on the day”. As my hon. Friend powerfully pointed out, the defeat of the miners in that strike led, effectively, to an attempt to crush working people in this country. That is very powerfully illustrated in “The Road to Wigan Pier” by George Orwell, who paints the picture of what the consequences of the failure of the strike were for working people.”
“In the two previous periods during which this country had to rearm significantly—the 1930s and the 1950s—it was a combination of increased taxation, increased borrowing and difficult choices about public expenditure that did it. I am not convinced by wishy-washy words about how just cutting welfare will sort it all out. Crucially, something else this Government understand and the previous Government never grasped is that defence spending is not just a cost. It is an investment and an engine for growth. We spend £32 billion annually with industry, equivalent to £460 for every person living in this country. UK defence supports 463,000 high-quality, well-paying jobs—one in every 60 jobs across the UK.”
“I believe they have brought coherence, great industry and a genuine patriotic determination to sort out the mess they inherited, and they deserve to be recognised for that. I am glad that the Government are investing over £270 billion across defence during this Parliament—not as an accountancy exercise, but as a genuine strategic commitment to rebuilding our national security from the ground up. As we meet our commitments made at The Hague NATO conference to reach 3.5% in the future, I understand that there will be difficult discussions to be had, just as there were difficult discussions about foreign aid. However, there is no magic bullet when we are talking about increasing defence expenditure, and pretending that one thing will solve the issue is simply not realistic.”
“The locusts were busy: armed forces’ pay was cut in real terms in nine out of 14 years; forces housing was in such a state of disrepair that complaints reached a record 13,000 in a single year; troop numbers fell to the lowest level since the Napoleonic era; frigates and destroyers were cut by a quarter, minehunters reduced by half and ground-based air defence spending was slashed by 70% in their final years in office; and the defence industrial strategy sat on a shelf gathering dust, with a commitment on paper, but nothing in practice. They certainly were the years that the locusts had eaten. That is the inheritance Defence Ministers have to contend with. I have spoken before about the urgency of rearmament, and I will not repeat myself, but I will say that I am incredibly proud of the Government’s Front-Bench Defence team.”
“I have spoken in this Chamber at some length about defence and the urgency of rearmament, and I was proud to join the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) and Field Marshal Lord Richards in creating the all-party parliamentary group on rearmament. Before I turn to what the Government are doing about defence readiness, I think it is worth pausing, as we always should, on how we got here, because context always matters. A century ago, the Member for Epping—one who understood well what it meant to watch a nation sleep while danger gathered—described the period of neglect and lost opportunity in defence as “the years that the locust hath eaten”. I think we can apply the same epitaph to the years of stewardship of defence of the previous Government and the coalition Government.”
“The legal and institutional framework for defence readiness matters and I think we all want to see that Bill come forward. I am by temperament an impatient person when it comes to defence—as you will be impatient for me to finish the speech, Madam Deputy Speaker—but the threats are not waiting for us. I am a fair person and it is only fair to say that in my view the Government are doing serious and sustained work for the renewal and rebuilding of our armed forces, restoring our industrial base and making Britain once again a country capable of defending itself. I certainly hope that the years the locusts have eaten are behind us.”
“Turning briefly to something I hope will receive the attention it deserves, the SDR rightly made several important recommendations on strengthening home defence and resilience in the context of a whole-of-society approach to national security—several hon. Friends have talked about that today. The threats we face are not confined to the battlefield. They reach into our infrastructure, our supply chains and our communities. Resilience must be built across the whole of society, not just within the wire fences of our military establishments. With that in mind, I was reassured to hear the Minister, at the beginning of the debate, say that Ministers are working hard and that we will in due course see a defence readiness Bill.”
“I want to acknowledge the other work the Government have done: last year, £1.5 billion was committed to building the factories of the future, including the first energetics factories in two decades, creating over 1,000 jobs in our industrial heartlands; the £8 billion deal with Turkey sustaining a 20,000-strong workforce across Scotland, Lancashire and Bristol; and the Type 26 frigates selected by Norway which were mentioned earlier in the debate. I was disappointed to see Sweden choose France over the UK in its frigate decision today, but we will just leave that to the traditional UK-France enmity. There is a genuine defence dividend that is measured not in press releases, but in real jobs in real communities the length and breadth of this country.”
“I was in Bristol recently at the National Armaments Director Group, the renamed defence Government support group, and I was glad to hear that it is doing more on SMEs. Maybe the Government Front Bench will comment more on that later, but it is right to recognise that SMEs are crucial and that, in the hon. Gentleman’s area of the country, they are really important. These are livelihoods, communities and the kind of good skilled unionised jobs that those of us on the Labour Benches have always stood for.”
“Mechanisms are already in train, including the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Humble Address, and last week the Prime Minister answered questions for nearly three hours. That is important. Referral to the Privileges Committee is not a partisan tool or a device to be deployed because one side sees a political opportunity. It exists for a clear, serious and evidenced prima facie case of misleading the House—cases that go to the heart of ministerial integrity.”
“That was the goal” ahead of the local elections. The goal was not the truth, not the outcome, and not the merits of the case—it was simply to force the spectacle of a vote. That tells us everything we need to know about the intent behind what is happening this afternoon. It is therefore no surprise that this debate has been widely characterised, even by those observing closely—political correspondents—as a win-win exercise for the Opposition. If they secure an inquiry, they claim vindication; if they lose, they still bank the headlines, the insinuation and the noise. That is not how the House should conduct itself when invoking one of the most serious mechanisms at its disposal. As my hon. Friend the Member for Smethwick (Gurinder Singh Josan) powerfully pointed out, we are not dealing with a vacuum.”
“The appointment of Mandelson was a profoundly flawed process; it was also a profoundly flawed choice—it was the wrong choice. I think of the victims of Epstein; I also think of Alistair Darling, who was a fine, committed public servant, and what he would be thinking today. This afternoon, we are being asked to make several leaps of faith, one of which is to believe that just nine days from local and national elections, we are here not because of a political stunt co-ordinated by the Conservative party but to accept that the Conservatives have turned into a sober, principled set of defenders of parliamentary standards who are not interested in pre-election theatre. Nobody seriously believes that. Even their own press briefings give the game away: a senior Conservative source was reported as saying “we got the privileges vote.”
“Because it is so evident that what the hon. Member is participating in this afternoon is partly political. In fact, he is partaking in a particularly dishonourable act in doing this in such a partisan way. To carry on with the case that I was making, I do not believe that what has been presented meets the bar that I just mentioned.”
“No, I am going to make some progress. At most, what we are dealing with is an argument about, as I said, a deeply flawed appointment, a deeply flawed process and the judgments around it. Those are matters for political debate, for scrutiny and for challenge across the Chamber, but they are not in themselves grounds for alleging contempt of Parliament. If they were, the Privileges Committee would be constantly in session. That brings me to the question of consistency. In recent years, the House has had to confront genuinely serious breaches: cases where standards were not just questioned but plainly and repeatedly violated; findings of bullying at the highest levels of government in the last Government; and Ministers in the last Government falling short of the standards expected of them.”
“The motion speaks the language of contempt—contempt of Parliament—but actually it reveals something else: the contempt in which the Opposition hold the British people.”