George Galloway: (Respect) rose—
George Galloway: Yes, Mr. Speaker, with trepidation, because I want to catch your eye more substantively later. What the Minister has just said flatly contradicts what he said a few minutes ago. The Government will have to get some inspiration as to what the real facts are. It cannot be true both that it is up to the Select Committee to decide what it wants to consider, and that the instruction, if passed,...
George Galloway: The exchange between the Minister and the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) suggests the ragged nature of the Government's preparation. The Minister will be aware of the looming shadow of judicial review, so why at midday today were the papers from Bindman and Partners, expressly pointing out the grounds on which judicial review could be sought, not among the documents that the...
George Galloway: On that point, Madam Deputy Speaker, I wonder if I might answer—
George Galloway: Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. That foul-mouthed, deliberately timed, last-10-second smear by the thug at the Dispatch Box cannot be answered by me—
George Galloway: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker—
George Galloway: Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Twice this evening, first from the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) and now from the Minister, you have permitted personal attacks on me that go beyond the norm in parliamentary discourse, as I think the Clerk will advise you. If I may say so, you ought to have intervened to deal with the point made by the hon. Member for...
George Galloway: The hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) said that it is a funny old world, and that is certainly true with regard to the issue that he raised. I am, I think, a longer-serving Member of this House than he is, and I remember when the Labour Benches were littered with members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Indeed, Members who wear different badges today used then to sport daily the...
George Galloway: Indeed; the Cabinet is full of them. That was a time when Britain was facing a Soviet Union and an eastern Europe bristling with thousands upon thousands of intercontinental ballistic missiles, all aimed at us. Now that there is no such adversary, those same Members have swapped their badges. I have no doubt that they will comprehensively vote down the motion tabled by the hon. Member for...
George Galloway: That is a despicable smear.
George Galloway: The Minister of State says from a sedentary position that it is more or less right. I take it that that means that it is not right. I have never uttered any such words. The words that I am speaking now are my words. If the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) would care to listen, he can disagree with me, but he should not attempt to put into my mouth words that I have never...
George Galloway: The exchanges that we have just heard are further evidence of my point that in this bubble people just do not get it. If I cannot touch the heart of the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead with what happened to the people in Falluja, I shall move on to firmer ground. Does the House not believe that hatred and bitterness have been engendered by the invasion and occupation of Iraq, by the daily...
George Galloway: I have to finish; I have gone on for too long. The experts in our own Foreign Office whom we pay to know the middle east better than the Ministers in Downing street told us in leaked documents—carefully leaked, no doubt, for the historical record—that we would be placing ourselves in greater danger if we did this. So there was nothing unpredictable about this morning's attack. Despicable,...
George Galloway: Name them.
George Galloway: rose—
George Galloway: It has been some time since I caught your eye, Mr. Speaker, so I am extremely grateful to the mystery hand that guides the lottery that chooses the subject for the Adjournment debate. To be successful on this subject the night before the G8 convenes in Gleneagles is exceedingly good fortune. On the subject of mystery hands, I should welcome my erstwhile hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd...
George Galloway: Is it permissible to describe the Government as mendacious, rather than any specific Minister, which is what I was doing?
George Galloway: I think I will quit while I am ahead on that one, Mr. Speaker, now that we have entered that judgment into the parliamentary lexicon. It is impossible to recognise the Government's story in the story being told by the campaigning organisations on the ground and by most of those concerned. For me, they are not the Lennon and McCartney of world development issues; they are the Status Quo. And...
George Galloway: The Arab leaders will have heard the British Foreign Secretary just publicly brand them as liars, but on that subject, the British military spokesman said to the BBC yesterday, "We expected a lot of hands up, but it hasn't quite worked out that way." Is not the Government's problem that the weapons of forgery, plagiarism, fabrication and lies that they have fed the people of this country and...
George Galloway: You said it would be over.