'It was not Parliaments finest day, to put it mildly.'

MP for Ellesmere Port

THE House of Commons had was set last week for a very important debate about best ways to secure a permanent end to the grotesque loss of life in Gaza.

What could have been an occasion when Parliament united to find common cause instead ended as a day when it fell into total disrepute.

So how did we get to that ridiculous stage? And why has the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, faced so much pressure to keep his job? There has been a great deal of speculation, so I will do my best to explain what happened.

MPs had gathered to debate an Opposition Day motion in the name of the Scottish National Party (SNP) on the subject of the conflict in Gaza. The SNP had a motion that they wanted Parliament to vote on at the end of the debate, as did the Government. Given the importance of the subject under consideration, Labour made a strong appeal to the Speaker to ask for a Labour motion on Gaza to be voted on too, to which he agreed. I was pleased that my party had put forward a detailed and credible motion that I supported which called for an immediate ceasefire, the return of the hostages and a political process to ensure that both Palestine and Israel have stable and secure states.

After due consideration the Speaker decided, as he is entitled to do, to overrule the advice of his clerk and allow for votes to be taken on three motions – SNP, Labour and, of course, the Government. And that is where the arcane standing order rules of the Houses of Parliament led to rowdy and raucous scenes with the reason for their anger was because it meant the SNP’s plans to have their motion being the only one calling for a ceasefire were scuppered.

The chaos was then intensified because the Government refused to press its motion before most of their MPs and the SNP’s MP’s walked out leading to the Labour motion passing unanimously in the absence of any other motion to rival it.

Such was the anger towards the Speaker that 71 out of 650 MPs (at the time of writing) had signed an Early Day Motion calling on Sir Lindsay to step down from office. Whilst he did break with precedent in allowing the Labour motion to be voted on he was I believe doing so for the right reasons because of the very real security concerns many MPs have had. Some MPs have had protests outside their homes, their families targeted and death threats and to not allow Labour MPs to have a vote on a Labour motion calling for a ceasefire would have increased that risk. Whilst I have had abuse myself I have had no threats of that nature but I was very concerned about those colleagues who had to experience that as it goes way beyond political debate and I was very worried about where it may lead.

Every major party would have had the opportunity to vote on their own motion had things, but as Sir Lindsay put it, things did not go to plan following the decision by the Conservative Party to pull their own motion. So although Parliament has finally passed a motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the enduring image in the public’s mind is squabbling MPs arguing over process. It was not Parliaments finest day, to put it mildly.