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Labour MP for Brent Central Dawn Butler was “thrown out” of the House of Commons on Thursday, 22nd July, after claiming that Prime Minister Boris Johnson had repeatedly lied to Parliament and the country. Dawn Butler is the fourteenth Westminster MP to have been dismissed from the House of Commons chamber since records began in 1992.
In a backbench business debate on the final day of Commons business before the summer recess, Butler condemned the government’s response to coronavirus. She told the deputy speaker, and fellow Labour MP, Judith Cummins: “The prime minister has lied to this house time and time again.” Cummins intervened twice to ask Butler to withdraw the charge of lying, and “reflect on her words”, but Butler refused. “I’ve reflected on my words,” she said, “and somebody needs to tell the truth in this house: that the prime minister has lied.”
Under House of Commons rules, it is forbidden for an MP to accuse a fellow politician of deliberate deceit, as it is considered unparliamentary language. Other words that have been deemed “unparliamentary” include “coward”, “git”, “hooligan”, “rat”, “swine”, and “traitor”. Butler rebuffed the claims that she breached the Commons rules: “It’s funny that we get in trouble in this place for calling out the lie, rather than the person lying.” Cummins immediately told Butler that she was suspended for the rest of the day, and ordered her to leave.
Other Labour MPs have since stepped forward to weigh in on the issue. One Welsh Labour MP, Chris Bryant, stated on Twitter that the acting deputy speaker had “no choice” but to eject Butler from parliament. However, he also quickly defended his colleague: “What is not in doubt in my mind is that the PM regularly misleads parliament and never corrects the record. He lies.” Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, has also defended Butler’s remarks: “Just to confirm Boris Johnson is a liar regardless of who calls him a liar or where they call him a liar.”
Another politician, former Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood, defended Dawn Butler’s accusations, declaring: “When you get thrown out of the chamber for speaking the truth, you are winning.” In 2004, Wood was ordered to leave the Senedd by Lord Ellis-Thomas after referring to the Queen as “Mrs Windsor”. Former Conservative minister, Gavin Barwell, tweeted: “I'm all for politicians being authentic, but there's enough poison in our politics as it is, and we should resist a descent to the name-calling that is common in some other countries.”
The Guardian argues “Johnson’s tendency towards dishonesty is much chronicled.” Indeed, during Johnson’s time in office, Downing Street has often declined to correct the record when the PM has said something accused of being false. In her claims, Butler referenced a widely-shared video, made by filmmaker Peter Stefanovic. The clip lists a series of misleading comments made by the PM about economic growth, investment in the NHS, and most recently how the COVID-19 vaccination programme had “severed” the link between infections, illness, and death.
“I am disappointed the Prime Minister has not come to the House to correct the record and correct the fact that he has lied to the House and the country over and over again,” Butler said.
Downing Street is yet to comment on the accusations.
Discussing the incident, Sir Keir Starmer (the current leader of the Labour Party) defended both Cummin’s decision and Butler’s claims. He concluded, “I agree with what Dawn had to say. I think the Prime Minister is the master of untruths and half-truths, and Dawn was simply giving some examples of that.”
John Bercow, Former Speaker of the House of Commons, who recently defected to Labour, has called for an overhaul to the rules so that MPs can challenge each other for lying. In a joint article written for The Times with Dawn Butler, Bercow said: "The glaring weakness of the present system is that someone lying to tens of millions of citizens knows he or she is protected by an ancient rule. They face no sanction at all. By contrast, an MP with the guts to tell the truth is judged to be in disgrace. It is absurd and people can see that it is absurd."
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