Ian Blackford ordered to leave Commons by Lindsay Hoyle
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The SNP leader got into a heated exchange with the Speaker of the House after accusing the Prime Minister of “lying” to the House of Commons over partygate allegations. Ian Blackford was urged to withdraw his comments at least three times but repeatedly renewed his attack on Boris Johnson. Sir Lindsay Hoyle was ultimately forced to order Mr Blackford out of the House of Commons in order to allow the debate on the recently-released Sue Gray report to continue.
Sir Lindsay asked the SNP Westminster leader to confirm he had withdrawn claims that the Prime Minister had misled the House after he first appeared to U-turn on his remarks.
But Mr Blackford replied: “That the Prime Minister may have inadvertently misled the House.”
The Speaker countered: “To help me help the House, you’ve withdrawn your earlier comment and replaced it with inadvertently?”
The SNP signed his ejection order when he quipped back at the Speaker reiterating his earlier assessment: “It’s not my fault if the Prime Minister can’t be trusted to tell the truth.”
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Amid raucous shouting from the Tory benches, Sir Lindsay then said: “Under the power given to me by standing order number 43 I order the honourable member to withdraw immediately from the House.”
But Mr Blackford walked out the chamber before the Speaker even had the chance to finish his sentence, later noting: “It’s all right, we don’t need to bother.”
Defending his comments before his ejection, the SNP’s Westminster leader insisted his grilling of the Prime Minister was part of his attempts to stand up for his own voters.
He said: “So here we have it. The long-awaited Sue Gray report, what a farce.
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“It was carefully engineered to be a fact-finding exercise, with no conclusions. Now we find it’s a fact-finding exercise with no facts.
“So let’s talk facts. The Prime Minister has told the House that all guidance was completely followed, there was no party, Covid rules were followed and that ‘I believed it was a work event’.
“Nobody, nobody believed it then. And nobody, nobody believes you now, Prime Minister. That is the crux – no ifs, no buts – he has wilfully misled Parliament.”
Mr Blackford added: “He’s being investigated by the police, he misled the House. He must now resign.
“I am standing up for my constituents that know this Prime Minister has lied and misled the House.”
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Top civil servant Sue Gray released a 12-page report in which she reported the information she gathered “represents a serious failure to observe not just the high standards of those working at the heart of Government but also of the standards expected of the entire British population at the time.
The report advised Boris Johnson to subject his Number 10 operations to widespread reform for “significant learning to be drawn from these events which must be addressed immediately across Government”.
As he apologized to the Commons about the findings, Mr Johnson refused to commit to publish the Sue Gray report in full once the police investigation has concluded.
Former chief whip Mark Harper told the Commons: “The question here is whether those who make the law, obey the law. That’s pretty fundamental.
“Many have questioned, including my constituents, the Prime Minister’s honesty, integrity, and fitness to hold that office. In judging him he rightly asked us to wait for all the facts.
“Sue Gray has made it clear in her update today that she couldn’t produce a meaningful report with the facts.
“So could I ask the Prime Minister the question (Labour MP Diane Abbott) asked him and to which he didn’t give an answer: when Sue Gray produces all of the facts in her full report after the police investigation, will he commit to publish it immediately and in full?”
Mr Johnson replied: “What we’ve got to do is wait for the police to conclude their inquiries, that is the proper thing to do. People have given all sorts of evidence in the expectation that it would not necessarily be published, at that stage I will take a decision about what to publish.”
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