Sir Christopher Chope

It is a pleasure to participate in this very important debate. I am going to add a perspective from someone who has never been in the Whips Office, but who has witnessed the dark arts of the Whips during his time in this place. I can see that what is happening today is that the Prime Minister has been persuaded by his Whips to issue a demand that all his troops should support him in voting down this motion, the consequence of which is that he will be even more unpopular, the results for Labour in the local elections will be even worse, and as a result it will be easier for the Labour party and its Whips to scapegoat the Prime Minister for their failures. It will then be easier for them to change their leader, which is what a lot of them are yearning to be able to do. If the Prime Minister referred himself to the Privileges Committee or the motion were not being contested, the Prime Minister, as many of my right hon. and hon. Friends have pointed out, would have the opportunity to go before the Committee and explain himself, and even if some of the allegations were proved to be true, in my view the penalty would not be that severe. I remember that, at the time of the 1997 general election, Margaret Thatcher came down to support me in Christchurch. On the same day, one of our colleagues, who was standing in another constituency, had been condemned by the then Standards Committee for having been in breach of the rules of the House, so the first question that the former Prime Minister had to contend with when she arrived in Christchurch was “What do you think of Neil Hamilton?” She had what I thought was the perfect answer. She said, “Nobody’s perfect.” Obviously, when someone has answered a question in that way it is very hard to put in any supplementaries, and despite their best efforts the press were not able to get any further, so they had to start talking about the prospects of the Conservatives winning back the Christchurch constituency in the election. I think that if this matter were referred to the Privileges Committee, ultimately the effect would be that someone would say, “Well, nobody’s perfect. They have a Prime Minister who uses words such as ‘whatsoever’ to exaggerate a situation.” When we look up “whatsoever” in a dictionary, we see that it is really intended to reinforce the strength of a proposition: “There was no pressure—whatsoever”.