Hoyle says Gaza debate decision was motivated by
threats against MPs
Commons speaker fights back against Tory and SNP
attempts to oust him after chaotic scenes over ceasefire motion
Why is speaker facing calls to quit?
Rowena
Mason, Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey
Thu 22 Feb
2024 09.10 EST
Lindsay
Hoyle has come out fighting in the face of Tory and Scottish National party
attempts to oust him, as Rishi Sunak’s spokesperson repeatedly refused to say
the prime minister has full confidence in him.
After
chaotic scenes during Wednesday’s Gaza ceasefire vote, Hoyle’s future as the
Commons speaker is in doubt as the SNP said his position was untenable and
dozens of backbench Tory MPs signed a motion calling for a confidence vote in
him.
Hoyle is
under pressure over his handling of an SNP motion calling for an immediate
ceasefire in Gaza, after he opted to change parliamentary rules in order to let
an alternative Labour amendment be debated as well as a government one.
Tory and
SNP MPs accused him of bowing to pressure from Keir Starmer to allow the Labour
motion, which was passed.
Hoyle once
again apologised for a “wrong decision”, against the advice of the House of
Commons clerks. He said his mistake had been in pursuit of looking after MPs,
after being told of “absolutely frightening” threats against them if the Labour
position was not debated.
He said the
SNP could have an emergency debate on Gaza, but the offer failed to placate its
Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn.
Hoyle’s
decision to allow the Labour amendment led the government to withdraw its own
motion on Gaza. The Labour motion subsequently passed, with Tory sources
confirming that it was partly because they did not have enough time or votes to
get their own amendment through the Commons. The SNP is furious that its
original motion was sidelined.
Government
sources said they were not pushing to remove the speaker from office, and Penny
Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, defended him as a “decent man”.
However,
Sunak’s official spokesperson declined to back him. When pressed several times
on whether he had confidence in Hoyle, the spokesperson deflected the question.
He said Sunak was purely focused on addressing the situation in the Middle
East, and the question of the speaker was a matter for parliament.
While the
government is not pushing for his removal, Kemi Badenoch, the business
secretary, retweeted a scathing intervention from the former attorney general
Geoffrey Cox saying Hoyle’s reasoning was unacceptable.
“There are
two possible explanations for the speaker’s decision to abandon longstanding
convention,” Cox said. “First, he did it to assist his former party leader get
out of a bind. Secondly, as he says, he did it in a misguided attempt to
protect certain Labour MPs from the intimidation they said would otherwise have
followed, if they had voted against the SNP motion.
“Either
reason is unacceptable. If the former, it is an abuse of his office. If the
latter, it is an abject surrender to intolerance and tyranny; it meekly offers
up the House of Commons as able to be influenced by external threats.”
During an
occasionally tense Commons session on Thursday morning, opinions were split
over Hoyle’s fate. Addressing the speaker directly, Flynn said: “As I have
expressed to you privately prior to proceedings here today, we do not on these
benches believe that you can continue in your role as speaker if we do not have
confidence in your ability to do so.”
The speaker
also received words of support from many MPs, including on the Conservative
benches. Sir Edward Leigh, a Tory backbencher, said: “I think we should move on
now and I would recommend that we don’t put in motions of no competence.”
Mark
Francois, a veteran of the Tory right, spoke emotionally in Hoyle’s defence.
Referring to the murder of his friend and fellow MP David Amess, Francois said:
“I will remember everything that the speaker did to help me and all of us when
our great friend, my best friend, was murdered ... Mr speaker went the extra
mile for all of us to help us all deal with that tragedy.”
Mordaunt
said on Thursday that MPs “cannot adapt our processes and procedures in this
place to not have difficult debates … we have to stand up for our constituents
and make the judgments we think are right. If we are adapting the procedures of
this house because we are fearful of the consequences of standing up and saying
what we think is right, then democracy has failed and the extremists have won.”
Keir
Starmer defended his decision to lobby Hoyle to allow a Labour amendment on the
Gaza debate. Starmer met Hoyle hours before the vote, arguing that the speaker
should ignore precedent and allow a vote on the Labour motion.
Speaking on
Thursday, he denied allegations of threatening the speaker, telling journalists
on a visit in Sussex: “I can categorically tell you that I did not threaten the
speaker in any way whatsoever. I simply urged to ensure that we have the
broadest possible debate. So that actually the most important thing, which is
what do we do about the situation in Gaza, could be properly discussed by MPs
with a number of options in front of them.”
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