Tory grandee describes House of Commons chaos as 'inexcusable' and an 'absolute disgrace'
manchestereveningnews.co.ukA veteran Tory MP has described chaotic scenes in the House of Commons tonight as 'an absolute disgrace'. Amid claims of bullying by Tory whips, MPs rejected Labour’s motion to allocate Commons time to consider banning fracking, in a vote initially designated as a 'confidence motion' in Prime Minister Liz Truss’s Government.
Labour’s motion was defeated by 230 votes to 326, a majority of 96. But moments later a Labour former minister Chris Bryant asked the Commons Deputy Speaker to investigate 'the scenes outside the entrance to the No lobby' after he saw 'members being physically manhandled into another lobby and being bullied'.
Describing events in the Commons, Conservative backbencher Sir Charles Walker told the BBC: “I’ve really not seen anything like tonight. “What I understand is that we were on a confidence vote, which means if you voted against your government, you’d lose the whip because in essence, you were saying you had no confidence in the Government. “Then at the despatch box, in the wind-up, the minister said it wasn’t a confidence vote, which created chaos in the division lobbies.
There was then a sort of 20-minute delay between the vote happening and the result being announced, which by the way, wasn’t even close.
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