11th July 2022: A Week in Parliament

Bye Bye Boris

So eventually Johnson was forced to do a resignation-type speech. Yet more lies undid him at the end – the tipping point being the lies that he gave to Tory MPs to go onto TV shows to defend him proved unsustainable. So many constituents have said to me “he is a clown” and “should never have been made Prime Minister”. They were so right, yet even after he did his stepping down speech, the TV cameras were able to find plenty of people in the north of England who voted Tory for the first time because of Johnson and still backed him. Quite unfathomable really!

Alistair Jack the Scottish Secretary of State also backed him in staying in post. So much for representing Scotland within the cabinet. While a caretaker Prime Minister might not be ideal authority-wise, there is no doubt that this is what should happen rather than Johnson staying in place until the Tories get a new leader. He has literally appointed a Zombie Government because of the number of people who won’t or can’t work with him. Having seen and heard many of these MPs now promoted to Ministers I can safely say they do not have the skills or talents to be Ministers. It was summed up when Andrea Jenkyns gave the bird/middle finger to the public when she was leaving Downing Street. Can you imagine the furore if an SNP Minster came out of Holyrood and gave the fingers to a crowd, even if there were hecklers? Overall, the mess sums up Westminster and a system imposed on Scotland. For the third time in a few years, Tory backbenchers and Tory party members get to decide who the new Prime Minister is, imposing someone else that the voters in Scotland had rejected.

BEIS Committee

The BEIS Committee of which I am a member of continues to be busy. We will be due to publish a report into the failings of the retail energy market. Hindsight can be wonderful, but it is obvious that in the past Ofgem was too lax about understanding what was going on in the market and how stable the new energy companies were. While some people were able to take advantage of cheaper energy deals, the reality is that we are all paying for it now. The failure of Bulb energy alone will cost over £2bn. Other hundreds of millions of pounds have already been added to our energy bills as part of the cost of the failures. Many of these companies went down owing customers money. We all get that credit reinstated when a new supplier takes over. However, it means we, as bill payers are having to cover the money that these energy companies effectively stole from customers. The owners of these companies also got very rich at our expense. The founder of Bulb energy is still employed on his £250k salary while the company is in administration. This is a choice of the Government and represents ongoing failures by them. We really do need big changes in Government.