Brendan O'Hara MP: speeches

Speeches

• 10 Jun 2026 · Draft Scotland Act 1998 (Increase of Borrowing Limits) Order 2026 · Hansard source

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  I find it hard to believe that the Conservative party is trying to conflate the uplift for the Scottish Government with internal party finances. The hon. Member is either trying to make a cheap political gag, or he is seriously conflating the borrowing powers of the Scottish Parliament with party finances. Is he accusing the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government of the danger of misappropriation of funds? He should be clear, because at the moment he is in danger of falling between two stools—making a silly political partisan gag and a rather serious accusation.

• 10 Jun 2026 · Draft Scotland Act 1998 (Increase of Borrowing Limits) Order 2026 · Hansard source

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  If the hon. Gentleman insists on going down this road, which I strongly advise him not to, I assume that his party will be supporting the amendment in the Scottish Parliament for an independent review into party political finances conducted by a parliamentary Committee, to look into every political party.

• 21 Apr 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Would the UK consider a state to be a democracy and would it continue normal diplomatic relations with that state were it to introduce a differential death penalty based on ethnicity?

• 20 Apr 2026 · Security Vetting · Hansard source

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  I suspect that most reasonable people have concluded that if the Prime Minister knew and inadvertently misled Parliament, he should resign. If he did not know, he is running an incompetent, shambolic Government and really should resign. If he was lied to yet again, he is simply too gullible and lacking in basic curiosity to serve as Prime Minister. Is he so detached from reality that he is the only person who cannot see that?

• 11 Mar 2026 · Royal Mail: Universal Service Obligation · Hansard source

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  Whether it is the failure of Royal Mail to meets its USO or the skyrocketing price of heating oil, it seems that rural communities, such as those in my constituency, are most impacted. We all agree that despite the often heroic efforts of the workforce, the service provided by Royal Mail management is totally unacceptable. The Minister knows that we are 60 days from a Scottish parliamentary election in which 1 million people will vote by post. How confident is he that Royal Mail will be able to cope, and what measures is he putting in place to ensure that it does?

• 5 Mar 2026 · Civil Service Pension Scheme · Hansard source

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  The privatisation of the delivery of the civil service pension scheme has been nothing short of catastrophic. The Government were well warned that Capita was ill-prepared for a job of that size, but they pressed ahead regardless. Although Capita must shoulder much of the blame, the Cabinet Office has serious questions to answer about its responsibility for this fiasco. Will the Minister start by apologising to those in my constituency who, after a lifetime of service, have been left facing penury because of the Government’s part in the hopeless mismanagement of this transfer?

• 2 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill · Hansard source

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  Although it would be churlish to deny that this Bill is a step forward, it is important to look at what it is a step forward from. I am one of the few Members of the House who sat through the Elections Act 2022 and went through it line by line in Committee. Along with colleagues who now sit on the Government Benches, we were united in saying that that Tory election Bill was an affront to democracy. But now in power, Labour has taken that affront to democracy and, rather than ripping it into a million pieces, is doing what Labour seems to do best: take the very worst of Tory legislation and make it slightly less offensive. Although elements of the Bill will improve existing legislation, and we will therefore support it, this is not what we were promised, and I fear that it will be seen as a huge missed opportunity. We very much welcome the extension of the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds for UK general elections, which would bring this place in line with Scotland, which has enjoyed that for more than a decade and where it has proven to be an unqualified success. We also welcome efforts to clamp down on dark money infiltrating UK politics. Shining a light on the murky world of Westminster political donations is long overdue. The Labour party has been promising that since 1997, so I think we had best put it in the “I’ll believe it when I see it” pile, particularly given that the scandal of dodgy donations that has now disgraced the Labour party, through Labour Together, continues to swirl around Labour MPs. As an Opposition party, one of our biggest arguments with the Tories was about the introduction of voter ID. We argued that it was a solution to a non-existent problem. The now Prime Minister was right when he said that it would lock people out of democracy. Yet now that Labour is in power, rather than scrapping the entire scheme, it has chosen to keep it and merely increase the number of acceptable forms of ID, knowing full well that the scheme disadvantages ethnic minority communities, the young, the homeless and the elderly. My problem with the Bill goes beyond what is in it; it is what is not in it. The rejection—once again—of any form of proportional representation is a scandal. The fragmentation of UK politics is happening at pace. The Government’s refusal to consider proportional representation is dangerously short sighted. Parliamentary elections have become a race to achieve 34%, because, as we know, that is where landslides happen. There could be a reality check coming after the next election, when a party whose Members sit not a million miles away from me, and which refuses to play by the rules, achieves a huge majority on barely a third of the vote. I urge the Government to reconsider their opposition to proportional representation. If they do not, we could all live to regret it. The Bill is deficient in several other areas: there are still weaknesses and loopholes in political finance, registration must be rolled out much quicker, there must be much tighter cryptocurrency regulations, and yet again, for whatever reason, the Labour party has decided to ignore the abomination of democracy at the other end of the corridor. The Bill is a million miles from being perfect, but on the basis that it is a very small step in the right direction, we will support it.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor · Hansard source

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  The release of the Epstein files has shone a light where so many people did not want a light to be shone. Even with millions of documents still to be released, it is abundantly clear that for decades, the rich, the politically powerful and the well-connected have colluded to cover up their utterly appalling behaviours. That light which is now being shone does not just illuminate those who are personally responsible for their behaviour; it reveals those who knew what was happening, who enabled it and who chose to turn a blind eye. The people of this country are rightly furious. That is why I made the point yesterday, and will make it again today, on the Humble Address on the release of the Peter Mandelson files that with trust in the Government at an all-time low, they only have one chance to come clean about everything they know and they hold pertaining, in this case, to the creation of the role of special representative for trade and investment and the appointment of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to that post. Of course, unlike the Mandelson files which this House demanded be released, the appointment of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor did not happen on the current Government’s watch. But Mr Mandelson leaves a long trail, and there may well be information which relates directly to him and which will cause serious embarrassment to many senior Labour party figures who were in power at the time. Let us not forget that the author Andrew Lownie explains in great detail in his book, “Entitled” about how it was former Trade Secretary Peter Mandelson who assisted Mr Mountbatten-Windsor in landing the role of UK special representative, seemingly against the advice of Mr Mountbatten’s brother, the then Prince Charles. Let me repeat my warning from yesterday that these files must be released and must be released in full, because any attempt to sanitise what is in them and to save face for any Government Ministers, past or present, could have serious long-term consequences for our democracy. That is also the very least that the victims and survivors deserve. We know that there are serious questions about the appointment of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor as trade envoy back in 2001 that need answers. They include: whose idea was it? Who vetted him? Was he vetted at all? What role did Peter Mandelson play in making that appointment happen? What in his previous life made him uniquely suitable for the position of UK trade envoy? What warnings were given before and during his stint as trade envoy about his character and behaviour? Who was he responsible to while serving as trade envoy? Who scrutinised his behaviour and spending? What warnings were given during his time as trade envoy and how were those warnings handled? In a normal, functioning democracy, we would not have had to wait until Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had been stripped of his titles and evicted from his royal house, and was facing removal from the line of succession, before being able to discuss this issue. There have been serious concerns about Mr Mountbatten-Windsor for decades, many of them relating to his time as trade envoy. There are reports of him requesting that the public purse cover the cost of his massage services. When one understandably angry and unhappy civil servant complained, he was promptly overruled by his bosses. That now retired civil servant commented recently: “I can’t say it would have stopped him, but we should have flagged that something was wrong.” Of course something was wrong, but what difference would it have made to us in this House? As Mr Mountbatten-Windsor was a member of the royal family at that time, we were not allowed to question or examine what he was doing as a special trade envoy. It was not just civil servants who found getting information on Mr Mountbatten-Windsor all but impossible. The author Andrew Lownie has reported that he has had multiple freedom of information requests rejected, including on the grounds that it would be too time-consuming for Departments to go through the volume of information. One rejection actually said that looking at just one year of Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s time as trade envoy would mean going through 1,927 digital files, each containing multiple pieces of information. Yet until Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s status changed, we in this House were not allowed to discuss that.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor · Hansard source

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  The answer is quite simple: nobody can be above the law. Everybody has to be equal in the eyes of the law. As the great Paul Flynn said, we have to remove the bandages from our mouths in this place, and I will return to that point. Fundamentally, regardless of rank or privilege, nobody should be above the law. Many people will be embarrassed by what has happened, not least, as we have heard, the now leader of the Liberal Democrats, who, as Under-Secretary for Business, Innovation and Skills, and, I presume, with his fingers firmly crossed behind his back, was forced to stoutly defend the then Prince Andrew. He said: “I…believe that the Duke of York does an excellent job”. —[ Official Report , 3 May 2011; Vol. 527, c. 649.] He called him a “long-standing success” and said he had been great for British business, but what else could he have said as a Government Minister? We are not allowed to speak the truth about certain individuals in this place. Within three months of the right hon. Member making those comments, Mr Mountbatten-Windsor had resigned in disgrace because of his continued relationship with the convicted paedophile and child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. It was not just Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s relationship with Epstein that caused concern. In February 2011, the Minister attempted to raise a question about the special representative role and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s links to a notorious convicted Libyan arms smuggler, only to be told by the then Speaker that “references to members of the royal family should be very rare, very sparing and very respectful”. —[ Official Report , 28 February 2011; Vol. 524, c. 35.] These archaic rules make a mockery of our democracy. The situation we face now was always going to occur, particularly as the royal family can and do both have a constitutional role and involve themselves in the political realm.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor · Hansard source

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  There is a slight irony here. We call ourselves the mother of Parliaments and the cradle of democracy, yet when it comes to an issue such as this we are bound by archaic rules that mean that we cannot hold the most powerful people to account. Let’s be honest: there may be some very good members and some very bad members of the royal family, but if we believe in the hereditary monarchy, it is pot luck what we get. I have seen the rules that have led us to where we are now and it is surely time to review them. It is beyond ridiculous that someone in a similar position could be appointed to exactly the same job as Mr Mountbatten-Windsor was, but, because they have been lucky in the great genealogical sweepstake and found themselves born into the royal family, be automatically above scrutiny and accountability and therefore beyond reproach.

• 23 Feb 2026 · Lord Mandelson: Government Response to Humble Address · Hansard source

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  Right now, trust in this chaotic Government has all but evaporated and the Prime Minister’s personal judgment is now on trial. We know that millions of documents are still to come out, so the Government really only have one chance to come clean, and any attempt to sanitise what is made public could have disastrous consequences for our democracy. Can the Government guarantee that the criteria for releasing the information will be exactly what this House demanded, and that the appointment of a new head of the civil service will not alter that one iota?

• 2 Feb 2026 · US Department of Justice Release of Files · Hansard source

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  Try as he might, the Prime Minister cannot escape his responsibility in this latest scandal to engulf Peter Mandelson. Ordering a very limited investigation into Peter Mandelson’s activities is pretty meaningless. We need an investigation that is fully independent of Government and the Labour party, with the scope to investigate not just Mandelson, but those who put him in the House of Lords, those who promoted him to UK ambassador to the United States, and those who have done everything possible to protect him over several decades, despite his scandal-ridden career. Does the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister agree?

• 22 Jan 2026 · Government Decision Making: Transparency · Hansard source

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  In the interests of improving Government transparency, will the Cabinet Office now publish the details of how the Government reached the decision that allowed Lord Mandelson, the man who described the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein as his “best pal” and who then urged him to fight for his early release following his conviction, not just to retain his place in the House of Lords but to keep the Labour Whip and his Labour party membership card?

• 26 Nov 2025 · 1994 RAF Chinook Crash · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Mr Dowd. I, too, begin by thanking the hon. Member for North Down (Alex Easton) for securing this debate and for the thoughtful and considered way in which he opened it. This debate is long overdue, and I share the hon. Gentleman’s hope that it will be the start of a process that leads to a much-needed and much-called-for fully independent, judge-led public inquiry. That inquiry must be able to compel people to give evidence so that we and, more importantly, the families can get to the truth of exactly what happened on the evening of 2 June 1994 when that ill-fated Chinook Mk 2 crashed into a fog-shrouded hillside on the Mull of Kintyre at the southernmost tip of my Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber constituency. It was of course a tragedy for the families, but it has also had a deep and lasting impression on the community of Campbeltown and south Kintyre, many of whom were first on the scene of the accident and are still haunted by the experience. This is deeply personal for many of my constituents. The issue has come up time and again since my election to this place in 2015, brought to my attention by people in the local area. I recall attending a packed memorial service at Southend parish church on 2 June 2019 to mark the 25th anniversary of the disaster, before joining scores of local people on that desolate, windswept hillside on the Mull of Kintyre for a ceremony at the memorial cairn erected to the memory of all those who died in the crash. The families have fought for more than three decades to get to the truth of what happened to their loved ones, only to be met by a wall of silence and obfuscation by the Ministry of Defence and repeated refusals to meet with them. No doubt the Minister will point to the fact that there have been numerous inquiries and investigations into the crash, but she knows that not one of those investigations has examined the central question of why the decision was made to authorise a flight in an aircraft that was known to be unfit and not airworthy. She knows, too, that every inquiry hitherto has not had the power to compel evidence, which is why it is essential that we have an independent, judge-led public inquiry. The Minister will also know that many of the findings of those early investigations have been thoroughly discredited, particularly the shameful attempt by the Ministry of Defence to pin the blame on the flight crew—Flight Lieutenants Jonathan Tapper and Richard Cook—who she knows were both subsequently fully exonerated. As one of the family members told me recently, “Rick and Jonathan were the best pilots, flying the worst aircraft.” Of course, if the MOD was so confident that it had got to the bottom of what happened on the Mull of Kintyre that evening and that there is nothing more to learn, why would it lock away and seal the key technical and legal documents for 100 years? There is a catalogue of such incidents, which means that the trust between the families and the MOD has completely evaporated over the past 31 years. That suspicion and loss of trust is deeply entrenched among the families. I recall, in 2019, raising on the Floor of the House of Commons how rumours were circulating that the Ministry of Defence was about to destroy some of the files pertaining to the crash. I had to ask the then Leader of the House to make sure that her colleagues in the Ministry of Defence did no such thing. That was the level of distrust back in 2019, and sadly, it has not improved. Last month, I was honoured to be asked, alongside the hon. Members for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood), for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne) and for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay), to join the families when they handed in a 51,000-name petition to Downing Street, demanding an independent judge-led public inquiry to get to the bottom of why that unairworthy aircraft was allowed to leave Belfast, and why it subsequently crashed into a Scottish hillside. After we handed in the petition, a few of us sat with the families for a few hours to hear about the impact the crash has had on them—not just the crash but the subsequent cover-up. I leave Members with some of the statements I jotted down from those meetings with those still-grieving family members. One of them told us: “It is like living with a chronic disease… the pain is always there.” Another, whose father was a senior police officer on board, said that because of their circumstances, “we all held our lives so dearly, but officers and Ministers held it so cheaply when they loaded them”— their families— “on to that Chinook.” A third added that “this is not a political issue. It is just an old-fashioned issue of right versus wrong.” I am sure that the Minister will agree that it is hugely significant that two former Defence Secretaries, Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Sir Liam Fox, have publicly expressed their support for the families’ campaign, stating that they now believe that they were misled regarding the circumstances of the flight. Given that, it has become increasingly difficult to conclude anything other than that what we have witnessed for the past 31 years is simply a cover-up. It is not a cover-up for reasons of national security; it is a cover-up for reasons of national embarrassment.