Tory government's contempt for parliament grows

 Yesterday, the House of Commons debated the decision by Michael Gove to permit the development of a new coal mine in Cumbria. The original decision by Cumbria County Council to permit the development was overturned on appeal, but the minister had called in this later decision. There was considerable feeling in the House, led by local MP Tim Farron, that the minister's interference was a retrograde move. However, their ability to debate the decision was handicapped by an egregious breach of the ministerial code. Hansard tells the story. After Gove spent nine minutes on his opening statement, it was clear that what he said was markedly different from the short text distributed to MPs and to Speaker Lindsay Hoyle:

Mr Speaker
Order. The statement I received was the thinnest ever, but the Minister has gone long. Between that and what the Opposition and I have been provided with, there is something missing, which is not in accordance with the ministerial code. We do not work like that. The shadow Secretary of State has not been able to read what has just been said. I am going to suspend the House in order to try to find out what is in the statement.

11.05am

Sitting suspended.

On resuming at 11.17 a.m.:

Mr Speaker
I will suspend the House until 11.30, when we will have business questions. That will enable us to try to get a transcript of what has been said in the statement, so that all Members, whatever their opinions, can ask informed questions, as they would wish to. That is how we will play it: we will have business questions at 11.30, then we will come back to the statement. I am sorry about this; this is not the way to do good government.

The Opposition took up the fight after Penny Mordaunt's business statement:

Thangam Debbonaire [shadow Leader of the House]

I thank the Leader of the House for the forthcoming business. I barely know where to start, but let us try with this morning’s chaos, which is not the only example but the latest example of a Minister failing in their duty to provide a copy of a ministerial statement to you, Mr Speaker, and to the Opposition leads, so that they are left listening to a statement that bears no resemblance to the one to which they were expecting to respond. It happened twice last week, and I asked the Leader of the House if she would drop her colleagues a note to remind them of their duty. I am dismayed at the absolute shambles we saw this morning. It is just not on.

These breaches of common courtesy, let alone the ministerial code, may not figure largely in conversations on the doorstep. They are, though, indicative of the contempt in which this generation of Tory ministers and  their advisers hold for anyone outside their circle. It leads to the complete misunderstanding of the difficulties which have driven so many people in the public service to go on strike. It inserts a thin end of a wedge into the authority of parliament whose thick end is fascism.