PMQs: Scottish MPs thrown out of Commons for protest against Boris Johnson
Commons Speaker take unusual action
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Your support makes all the difference.Two Scottish MPs have been thrown out of the Commons chamber after they attempted to protest about independence before Prime Minister’s Questions.
Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle acted after repeatedly warning the MPs to sit down and telling them to “shut up a minute”.
Alba Party MPs Kenny MacAskill and Neale Hanvey were ordered to leave the chamber amid furious scenes at the start of the session.
Mr MacAskill could be heard trying to raise a point of order and appeared to say “we need a referendum in the Prime Minister” before he was drowned out by other MPs.
Mr MacAskill refused to sit down and continued to speak, prompting Sir Lindsay to act.
Mr Hanvey then rose to his feet, before he was subsequently told to leave the chamber.
Both men are former SNP MPs. But they both joined the Alba Party when it was created by former SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond.
Mr MacAskill is a former senior minister in the Scottish government.
The two men were protesting about the UK Government’s refusal to transfer the powers necessary to hold a second Scottish independence vote to the Scottish government.
Ministers have said now is not the time for another vote on the issue, after 55 per cent of Scots backed remaining in the UK in 2014.
During PMQs Boris Johnson told MPs that when it came to independence for Scotland: “We are much much better together”.
He said that the “last thing” Scots needed with the current economic situation was more constitutional wrangling.
In a letter to the Prime Minister the two Alba MPs write: “The decision taken by you, in the dying days of your Premiership, to reject out of hand the request for a Section 30 Order which would allow a consented and legal Independence Referendum to take place is an egregious afront to Scottish Democracy and to the people of Scotland.
“A majority of Scots voted in the 2021 Scottish Parliament Election, on the Regional List, for the Scottish National Party, the Scottish Green Party and the ALBA Party - all of whom stood on a platform of ensuring an Independence Referendum would take place within the current parliamentary term.”
They add: “As the self-styled “Minister for the Union” you must recognise that this Union is a voluntary one, and was meant to be a union of equals, as such it can only be maintained by consent of the people of Scotland. You should be in no doubt that holding Scotland’s democracy hostage is something which the people of Scotland will not put up with.”
The two MPs were later formally suspended from the Commons.
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