It takes a cold fish to let girls suffer
The coelacanth – or CC to its friends – is a deep-sea fish which has been floating around for 400 million years. It has an extremely small brain, and the remaining 98.5 per cent of its skull is filled with fat.
Sounds a lot like Tory MP Christopher Chope, CC to his enemies – of which there are many – who seems to have been around for just as long.
Otherwise it is hard to explain why, on Friday, he chose to wreck a measure which would have helped protect girls from genital mutilation.
You’d have to be almost brainless to oppose that.
The NHS says it sees 9,000 cases of FGM a year, and most of the victims are aged five to nine.
To stop that, a bill was being steered through the Commons by fellow Tory Zac Goldsmith which would have allowed family courts to make care orders covering children at risk. Hardly very contentious.
But the 71-year-old MP for Christchurch has a bee in his prehistoric bonnet about allowing legislation to pass without debate – no matter how worthy the issue. And a Commons rule allows an MP to merely shout “object” to stop a bill in its tracks.
The whole tortuous process must then start all over again.
But without Government time being made for it, the bill has to go round the Houses once more, which means it’s likely to be lost – especially with the backlog of Brexit legislation to get through.
CC has been clogging up Westminster for more than two decades, so he knows exactly the effect of what he’s doing.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid tweeted his disappointment, and Health Secretary Matt Hancock his outrage, but Chope seems to have skin as thick as a coelacanth’s scales and ploughs on with his Blitzkrieg of bills regardless.
This is the second piece of legislation aimed specifically at the welfare of women that he has blocked. Last year he shouted “object” to the upskirting bill, intended to stop pervs using selfie- sticks to photograph women’s knickers.
A gang of women MPs got their own back by d e c orat ing CC ’ s Commons office in their own knickers – freshly bought for the purpose, I’m assured.
I know of one Whitehall aide who delights in scrawling “object” on any private members’ bills which cross her desk bearing CC’s name.
She’d make a far better MP for Christchurch than this dishonourable member.
Either the Commons rule which allows this to happen has to go, or he does. Preferably both. They are past their sell-by dates.
Oh, and another fact about the coelacanth is that you can’t eat it because its flesh is full of urea.
Sounds like Chope, too. All pee. And wind.
Both he and the rule he relies on are past their sell-by date