Sir Lindsay Hoyle urged to ‘come clean’ as dozens of MPs call for him to go
Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle is being urged to “come clean” about whether Labour tried to influence his handling of a debate on Gaza which descended into chaos.
The SNP said he needs to make a “make a personal statement” detailing all of his meetings and communications with the Labour leadership ahead of yesterday’s motion.
Stephen Flynn, the party’s Westminster leader, told Sky News he believed there was a “stich up” between the Speaker and Labour over the amendments – something Labour has denied.
The Tories have made similar accusations, with health minister Maria Caulfield saying Sir Lindsay needs to “come clean” ahead of a meeting later today with leader of the House Penny Mordaunt and party chief whips.
Sir Lindsay is fighting to save his job as a growing number of MPs call for him to resign.
At the time of writing, 57 MPs have signed a no confidence motion in him.
Politics Live: Speaker clinging on to job
The row broke out on Wednesday night after he allowed a vote on a Labour amendment to an SNP motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
Opposition parties are not usually able to amend opposition motions, only the government, so some Tory MPs saw the decision as unfair given Sir Keir Starmer was expected to face a significant rebellion had his party’s amendment not been chosen.
The SNP was also left furious that Labour’s amendment was chosen to be voted on first – leading to accusations Sir Lindsay had allowed the debate to be “hijacked” by Labour and resulting in Conservative and SNP MPs storming out of the chamber.
Health minister Maria Caulfield told Sky News “the rumours are that Labour were going to lose quite heavily and they tried to influence the Speaker with that”.
“He needs to come clean about what discussions were had,” she added.
Labour has denied this and suggested the Tories boycotted the proceedings because they were worried about a rebellion on their own side.
While both Labour and the SNP called for an immediate ceasefire, albeit using different definitions, the government’s amendment called for an “immediate humanitarian pause” in the fighting.
Ms Caulfield accepted last night was “absolutely unedifying” given people in Gaza are dying, but blamed Sir Lindsay for turning an important debate “into a circus”.
She said she was “disappointed and surprised” by his behaviour and that she would “struggle now to support” him.
However she did not go as far as saying he should stand down – noting he had already apologised and will be meeting with cabinet minister Ms Mordant and chief whips of the political parties later today.
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Speaker sorry over ceasefire vote
“Let’s see what happens in the next 24 to 48 hours. He knows he did wrong. He’s apologised, and let’s see what he proposes to fix the situation.”
Gaza vote: What happened in the Commons yesterday – and can the Speaker be sacked?
Commons Speaker facing calls to resign
Last night Labour sources told Sky News that Labour whips told Sir Lindsay – who was a Labour MP before taking on the role of Speaker – that they wouldn’t back him to carry on in his position after the next election if he didn’t pick their party’s amendment.
Shadow cabinet minister Pat McFadden told Sky News it is “not true that any threats implied or otherwise” were made by Labour to the Speaker’s position – and Sir Lindsay is “taking the blame unfairly” for the government’s decision not to participate in the proceedings.
This meant that Labour’s amendment ended up passing unopposed without a formal vote and the SNP were ultimately unable to vote on their own motion.
Advice from the clerk of the House said the decision to select both amendments represented “a departure from the long-established convention for dealing with such amendments on opposition days”.
However the letter said Sir Lindsay ultimately has discretion over what amendments to select.
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Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.
Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.
Politics latest: Grooming gangs findings unveiled
The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.
In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.
The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.
Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.
Education Secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.
“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’
“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…
“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”
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Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.
A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.
One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.
There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.
Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.
Read more on grooming gangs:
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A timeline of the scandal
Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.
He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”
He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.
Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.
“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.
The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.
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