IN A memorable moment of Westminster drama at the end of January, Ian Blackford was effectively thrown out of the House of Commons for stating that Boris Johnson had lied to MPs. 

Speaker of the House Lindsay Hoyle requested several times that Mr Blackford, the SNP Westminster group leader, adjust his language. He suggested that the wording be changed, to expressly suggest that if the Prime Minister had made statements that were false, he may have done so unwittingly.

Blackford refused to do so and eventually left the chamber, after multiple threats from the speaker to have him removed from the session.

The issue with this is not that Lindsay Hoyle followed parliamentary protocol, or that Ian Blackford refused to do so; the problem lies within the protocols themselves. Anyone who has observed a session of parliament will be able to recognise phrases such as ‘right honourable member’, or the way in which comments are addressed to the Speaker of the House, rather than directly to another member of parliament.

For many, the ways MPs discuss issues and speak to each other during sessions feels outdated and disconnected from the ways in which those they represent converse. This shouldn’t be surprising, given that the rules and courtesies that MPs follow are mostly derived from a work originally created in 1844. Thomas Erskine May’s Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament still forms the basis for many of the customs and methods of address held up by MPs today, and while it is now in its 25th print edition, it’s easy to see the issues that following guidance written for a different time can cause.

The issue faced by Ian Blackford is not unique to that particular session. On the 22nd of July 2021, Labour MP Dawn Butler was ejected from the commons by the acting deputy speaker Judith Cummins. The reasons for this ejection were the same: Butler dared to point out that the Prime Minister had lied about the effectiveness of the vaccine rollout on serious illness and deaths, relating to Covid-19.

In both cases, the insistence from the Speaker’s chair related to intention. In other words, the Speaker’s objection was not that the Prime Minister had lied or misled parliament, it was that there was no proof that he’d meant to. To some people, this may seem entirely fair; people make mistakes after all, but when we consider the way discussions in parliament work, it becomes a more serious issue.

It’s nearly impossible to prove definitively that someone intended to lie during a debate. It’s easy for someone to claim they had misinterpreted ‘facts’ that they based their opinion on. When this is combined with a conversational style in which it is impossible to say that someone told a lie, rather than state that they may have done so inadvertently, it means that holding someone to account for what they say becomes difficult.

Again, this doesn’t mean that people don’t make mistakes, or that it’s impossible to make a statement and see the facts change subsequently. It does however mean that if someone lies, they can do so without fear and that isn’t something we can afford to allow in our political class. It also means that the only people potentially able to hold them to account, are other MPs.

In the same session of parliament that saw Ian Blackford’s ejection, Boris Johnson made reference to opposition leader Sir Kier Starmer’s time at the head of the Crown Prosecution Service. Johnson, clearly agitated by Starmer’s speech from the dispatch box, mentioned that he was in charge at the CPS when it failed to go ahead with the prosecution of Jimmy Saville. He then suggested that Starmer ‘used his time prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile.’

The furore over the comment, and Johnson’s refusal to withdraw it from the parliamentary record, saw the resignation of some of his top aides. This result however seems less dramatic than the scenes on Thursday the 7th of February, which saw Keir Starmer hounded by a crowd of protestors outside Portcullis house in Central London. The result was that Met officers were required to escort Starmer to a waiting car.

It’s not a huge logical leap to associate comments barked at Starmer by the crowd with the implication made by Johnson in parliament that he was responsible for the CPS failing to prosecute Saville. Although this is only one example of the untruths uttered in parliamentary sessions over the past two years, it demonstrates the power that the words the Prime Minister, and by extension his government, use have on the public consciousness.

We’ve seen the effect of this before, in conversations around immigration and asylum when undocumented migrants are termed as ‘illegal’, with crime statistics, and Brexit. What our politicians say matters. We need to end the culture that obscuring the truth to misrepresent progress, and point scoring are an acceptable way for our country’s political class to debate in parliament.

If we continue to allow the language used in Westminster, in combination with outdated traditions, to hide falsehoods from the public and from those we elect, then our system of government becomes meaningless. In order for a government to be truly effective, it must have the trust of the public, and the last two years that has diminished severely. We’re faced with a situation where parts of the electorate would rather believe conspiracy theories about social control, for example, than trust a government when it tells them that a vaccine will reduce the spread of a disease.

As we move deeper into the climate crisis, learn to live with Covid, face the cost of living crisis and war between Russia and Ukraine, we need to be able to trust our politicians. If we allow our leaders to misrepresent information to further their own ends, we will only see our problems deepen. To remove the ability of people like Johnson to twist the truth, we need to change the language that enables them to do it.

Tom Huggins-Teasdale is a writer for the Immigration Advice Service