As we reported a few days ago, one of our MPs let his mouth get away with him in a recent Westminster Hall debate about hospices. Calling Ivan Lewis an a**hole seemed to be allowing the minister to get off lightly, at least as far as many of our commenters were concerned.
Now party leader Nick Clegg has weighed in and given his opinion, a piece in the Bradford Telegraph and Argus:
Nick Clegg last night defended local MP Greg Mulholland who stormed out of a Commons debate after insulting a minister.
He said he was not expecting a public apology from his health spokesman and that he would not be disciplined.
But he said it was unacceptable and not language the Leeds North West MP … would use in the Commons on a normal day.
It’s been a busy day for Nick in the Bradford Telegraph and Argus – he also gave them an interview about gun and knife crime.
UPDATE: Greg has written about the incident for the New Statesman blog under the unprovocative heading, Lies, swearing and utter b**locks.
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7 Comments
I thought he called him an “arsehole”? It’s quite hard to pronounce “a**” – do you enunciate the “*”s?
Here is the exchange:
‘ . . Ivan Lewis (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department of Health): I congratulate the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) on securing this important debate and on the passionate and authentic way in which he goes about championing the cause of hospices. . . The only partisan contributions made during the debate were made by the hon. Members for Cheadle (Mark Hunter) and for Leeds, North-West (Greg Mulholland). They turned it into a party political issue. They talked about a real-terms cut in the amount of funding for hospices based on those figures. That was absolutely opportunistic and disgraceful.
Greg Mulholland : Will the Minister give way?
Ivan Lewis (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department of Health): Will the hon. Gentleman be writing a blank cheque to the hospice movement? Is he saying that if the Liberal Democrats ever formed the Government, they would meet all the hospice costs at 100 per cent. recovery? Of course not, but that is the impression that Liberal Democrat Members always give when contributing to debates.
Greg Mulholland : Will the Minister give way?
Ivan Lewis (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department of Health): We are all fed up with it. I return to the substantive issues.
Greg Mulholland : Will the Minister give way?
Ivan Lewis: I will not give way. On regulation costs, I shall consider the question of the consultation that the Healthcare Commission is undertaking-
Greg Mulholland : He’s an a*******.
Ivan Lewis: -and the nature of regulation costs. That was not very parliamentary language, Mr Williams. On the question of-
Mark Hunter (Cheadle, Liberal Democrat): Will the Minister give way?
Ivan Lewis: No, I will not.’
from: http://tinyurl.com/2rfpqc
Mulholland certainly needs to learn some self-control. He should apologise.
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Kacin Alexander
Well, Clegg goes down in my estimation; Mullholland’s language should not be condoned in any way. Mind you, given the general support for Mullholland on this blog I am not too surprised that Clegg reacted the way he did. Go and wash your mouths out with soapy water the lot of you 🙂
I don’t quite see how saying that his language was ‘unacceptable’ is condoning what happened. The exchange reflects badly on the quality of parliamentary debate as a whole: Ivan Lewis was pathetic in his response – what is the point in having a debate at all if you are not prepared to listen to the substantive points being made by other people – but Greg should not have allowed himself to be provoked to that extent, though it’s easy for me to sit here and pontificate.
Well, Tony, then the heading of the thread is wrong; either Clegg stood by him or didn’t; which is it? Or it is both, depending on which audience you are speaking to 🙂 ? But to say something is unacceptable while not seemingly to require any action on Mullholland’s part to demonstrate that he understood this (i.e. no apology required etc) seems pretty lilly-livered.
I’d rather have an MP on our books who shows a bit of humanity and occasionally lets go a bit a of the language most of use use and take for granted. Who hasn’t said worse about the Prime Minister when he’s egregiously not answering questions*, or robotic Labour ministers or backbenchers. Off your high horses: Greg said what a lot of us think. Swearing is a laxative which purges the soul (Spike Milligan).
* I still admire Lynne Featherstone’s restraint for not lunging across the chamber and slapping Brown cross-eyed for his disgraceful non-answer to her perfectly reasonable question about Heathrow.