Government ‘will play no further part’ in vote on Labour amendment for Gaza ceasefire after row with speaker – UK politics live

Key events

SNP and Conservative MPs walk out of Commons chamber in protest

Conservative and SNP MPs have walked out of the Commons in protest at the Speaker earlier selecting both Labour and government amendments.

The current situation in the Commons remains extremely chaotic and unedifying.

King Charles meets with Rishi Sunak and Privy Council

The King has held his first face-to-face official duties – an audience with prime minister Rishi Sunak and a Privy Council – since being diagnosed with cancer.

Charles met Sunak at Buckingham Palace late on Wednesday afternoon, marking the restart of their weekly encounters to discuss matters of government.

Kate McCann, from Times Radio, on deputy speaker Rosie Winterton’s handling of the tensions in the Commons.

Stephen Flynn, from the SNP, repeats his question about where the Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle is and calls for the Commons to be suspended.

MPs are now raising questions of procedure.

Stephen Flynn, from the SNP, is absolutely furious that the Speaker is absent. He also calls for the SNP motion to be voted on first.

Lucy Powell, shadow leader of the House, says Labour support what the Speaker said earlier resulting in much shouting from the other side of the House.

The atmosphere is very fraught and tetchy now.

Mordaunt appears to be trying to claim the moral high ground by saying it will not divide the house.

But also criticise the Speaker and suggest bias.

She also told MPs: “Long-established conventions that should not be impaired by the current view of a weak leader of the Opposition and a divided party.

“I would ask that the Speaker take the opportunity to reassure all honourable and right honourable members that their Speaker, our Speaker, will not seek to undermine those rights in order to protect the interests of particular members and that future Opposition Day debates will not be hijacked in this way.

“I say this for the benefit of all members.”

Penny Mordaunt criticises speaker over amendments decision

Mordaunt also criticises the speaker for having “inserted himself into that row, and undermined the confidence in this House”.

She also calls for “our speaker” to assure MPs that future debates “will not be hijacked in this way”.

Mordaunt added: “I fear that this most grave matter that we’re discussing today and this afternoon has become a political row within the Labour party and that regrettably Mr Speaker has inserted himself into that row with today’s decision and undermined the confidence of this House in being able to rely on its long-established standing orders to govern its debates.”

Penny Mordaunt says government will withdraw amendment, apparently in response to row over Lindsay Hoyle's decision

Mordaunt said as a result the government will play no further part in the decision in today’s proceedings in the Commons.

This seemingly means the Labour motion will pass and there is no vote on the SNP motion.

Penny Mordaunt, leader of the House, is speaking now about the Speaker’s earlier amendment decision.

She said on the government’s side of the Commons “we have never asked procedures of this house are upturned..even when we have faced extreme abuse.”

Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, is planning to use a point of order to criticise Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker, for his decision to allow a vote on the Labour amendment, Jon Craig from Sky News reports.

The debate had been expected to run until 7pm, but now it is due to end earlier.

Nadeem Badshah is now taking over the coverage.

Top Whitehall official releases memo saying ex-Post Office chair wrong to claim she told him to slow compensation payments

Turning away from the debate for a moment, the Department for Business and Trade has published a six-page note from Sarah Munby, who was permanent secretary at the department a year ago, about the conversation she had in January 2023 with Henry Staunton, then Post Office chair.

Staunton has published his own account of the conversation which he says backs up his claim that in the conversation he was told to slow down compensation payments to vicitims of the Post Office Horizon scandal. (See 9.21am.)

Munby, who is now permanent secretary at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, says that Staunton has placed the wrong interpretation on his memo about what was said and that she never suggested he should delay compensation payments. She says:

It is not true that I made any instruction, either explicitly or implicitly, to Mr Staunton to in any way delay compensation payments. I did not. Neither Mr Staunton’s note, nor the contemporaneous note that my office made, suggest otherwise. In fact, no mention of delaying compensation appears in either note. I have attached both notes to this letter. I note that Mr Staunton originally said that there had been a direct instruction. Since he located the file note this seems to have moved to a suggestion of some sort of implied instruction. Such a claim is also not in any way supported by the notes and did not take place.

As the notes record, we discussed Post Office operational funding, not compensation funding. These two areas of spend were separately ringfenced, and it is factually wrong to suggest that cuts to compensation would have improved the Post Office’s financial position. The two notes do not indicate I made an implied suggestion that delays should be made, or that Mr Staunton understood me to be making one.

The department says the new memo refutes the claims made by Staunton about the conversation. A government spokesperson said:

Sarah Munby’s letter sets the record straight on her exchange with Mr Staunton.

Neither of the records taken at the time suggest the government – either at official or ministerial level – wanted to slow down or delay compensation payments to postmasters, as the secretary of state said on Monday.

Funding for compensation is separately ringfenced expenditure, and is not accessible to the Post Office for any purpose other than compensation payments.

This is a distraction from the important work to continue to deliver for postmasters, which the Business Secretary is focused on.

The SNP will sign the early day motion tabled by the Conservative MP William Wragg expressing no confidence in the speaker, Kieran Andrews from the Times reports.

An early day motion on its own has no impact. MPs tabled them all the time, but they don’t get debated and so, by itself, an EDM expressing no confidence in the speaker doesn’t matter. Both of Sir Lindsay Hoyle’s predecessors, John Bercow and Michael Martin, had EDMs tabled against them.

Only five Tories signed the anti-Bercow one, and he stood down at a time of his own choosing.

But Martin was forced out. That was not a direct result of the fact that 23 MPs had signed an EDM saying he should go. But those signatures were evidence of fact that Martin was losing the confidence of many MPs, because of his cack-handed response to the expenses scandal, and the EDM prompted David Cameron to hint that the opposition might schedule a vote on Martin’s future. What finally persuaded Martin to resign was when Gordon Brown, then PM, let him know the government no longer thought he should stay.

As PA Media reports, the Labour MP Rosena Allin-Khan recalled in the debate meeting humanitarian workers who had worked on the ground in Gaza, saying: “It was truly obvious to me that there has not been adequate protection of civilians, as it is obvious to all of us.”

She described accounts of the suffering, including descriptions of children under five “talking of wanting to take their own lives because they have watched their siblings hanging from buildings, dead; they have watched their parents exsanguinating in front of them, and are now left alone to face this world”. She went on:

Yes we need a peace process, yes the hostages must be freed, yes the wheels of international humanitarian law must turn, and yes, the Palestinian people must have a recognised state, but first, today, this minute, now, we must have an immediate ceasefire to save tens of thousands of lives.

Today, let us say clearly that an immediate ceasefire must come, justice must be done, and peace must be won.

Mark Logan, the Conservative MP for Bolton North East, used his speech in the debate a few minutes ago, to say that he was now going to say in public what he has been saying in private. He said:

I want, my constituents want, and Gaza needs, an immediate ceasefire.

It’s not a sustainable ceasefire, it’s not a long-lasting ceasefire, which is basically just sustainably by other means …. With 28,000 now dead in Gaza, 11,500 children, playing around with words is just playing around with people’s lives.

Israel has gone too far. It’s disproportionate. It’s not gone too far just today. It’s gone too far already for months.

And I’m concerned about Rafah, because time and time again we have heard about innocent people’s lives in Gaza. Time and time again we have reached the figure of 30,000 [deaths]. How can we have any trust that the 1.5 million people in Rafah will also be left untouched?

Logan also criticised fellow Tories arguing that a vote for a ceasefire would just be symbolic. He said:

Members on my own side of the house have talked about how this is merely symbolic or it is virtue signalling, but at the end of the day we are MPs not to fix potholes, we are MPs not to follow up with our next door neighbour ‘the hedge has grown into my garden’. That is not what we are here for. We are here to protect lives, and this is the opportunity today to call for an immediate ceasefire.

Yes, it may just be signalling to an extent, but that signal has to be given to what we see as one of our close allies, Israel, in the region.

That has to happen today because in times gone by, with the United States back 20 years ago with Iraq, we thought we were doing the ‘good friend thing’ to go along with the United States. No, the better friend says no, this must stop now, this must stop today.

So a ceasefire must happen now, and so I no longer in good conscience can continue on backing in public the line that we have taken on this side of the house, regrettably.

Although all the focus media focus has been on splits in the Labour party over Gaza, it is worth remembering that there are Conservative rebels on this topic too.

More on the Tory backlash against Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker. This is from the Sun’s Noa Hoffman.

Minister messages: “The mood in the Commons is alarmed and aghast. The speaker is probably finished.”