Will Lindsay Hoyle really last as Speaker? Today he managed to enrage the SNP once again by refusing the party’s application for an emergency debate. The plan had been to use this SO24 debate, as it is known, to refresh the argument that the SNP couldn’t put to a vote last week about a ceasefire in Gaza. SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn raised this in a point of order this afternoon. He said:
Mr Speaker, you apologised to the SNP and indeed you apologised to this House. You said: “I made a mistake, we do make mistakes and I own up to mine. We can have an SO24 to get an immediate debate because the debate is so important to the House.” Those were your words, Mr Speaker…
It is my understanding, Mr Speaker, that SO24 application has not been accepted. Can you please advise me when it will?
The Speaker replied that the standing order said he should not give any reasons for his decision on an SO24 application, but that given the exceptional circumstances, he was going to explain anyway. He said he understood that the government was ready to make a relevant statement tomorrow, so there was a ‘very imminent opportunity’ for the matter to come before the House. He added that this didn’t mean members couldn’t apply for a debate ‘at a later stage’, but that he had consulted the deputies and the clerks on the matter and they had come to the decision that this was the right decision to take. It was striking that Hoyle referred to consulting with the clerks and deputies, given the letter written to him by the Clerk of the House Tom Goldsmith about the decision he took on last week’s Opposition Day motion and amendments.
Hoyle has less heat directed at him from the Conservative benches than he did last week, but he clearly sees that his position remains vulnerable and that he needs to show he is not acting against convention on a regular basis. The SNP were unhappy, unsurprisingly. Flynn issued a statement in which he accused Hoyle of breaking his word: ‘Yet again, Westminster is failing the people of Gaza by blocking a vote on the urgent action the UK government must take to help make an immediate ceasefire happen.’ He has pointedly made this about the whole of the UK parliament, rather than just the Speaker, to add grist to his party’s mill about there being a Westminster plot to silence Scotland-Gaza. This imminent government statement will undoubtedly bring more criticism of the Speaker – as well as presumably ministers – so Hoyle is not out of the woods yet.
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