PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Points of Order - 22 May 2025 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am on record as having expressed my appreciation to the Leader of the House for her insistence that Ministers should give accurate and timely responses to parliamentary questions. I am sure she will therefore share my disappointment that in answering my question earlier she asserted that inflation is falling when in fact it is not falling but has reached 3.5%. She also chided me for not having raised the issue at Treasury questions on Tuesday, but the news did not come out until Wednesday. Is that the standard we are now expected to accept?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. As he will know, that is a matter of debate and is not a matter for the Chair.

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I rise in my role as chair of the all-party group on Ireland and the Irish in Britain regarding yesterday’s Opposition day debate on business and the economy in which the shadow Secretary of State the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith) said in response to an intervention from the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone):

“I am not sure if one can subsist entirely on a seed potato—it may have been tried historically, and not with enormous success”.—[Official Report, 21 May 2025; Vol. 767, c. 1038.]

Those words appear to be referencing the tragedy of the Irish potato famine, which, if that is the case, is of course offensive and insensitive to what took place at the time in the United Kingdom. Can you, Madam Deputy Speaker, please advise on how best we can remedy any offence caused by outlining the process for an hon. Member to withdraw such a statement?

I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving me notice of his point of order. I take it that he has notified the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith) that he intended to refer to him in the Chamber.

The Chair is not responsible for the shadow Secretary of State’s remarks, but the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) has put his point on the record.