MPs left bamboozled by broad Scottish accent

Translation: Ministers fail to understand Scots tones

Since sweeping en masse into Westminster, the SNP have complained they find the Tory Government’s policies incomprehensible – but for one Scottish MP, the problem is the other way around.

Alan Brown has revealed that ministers have so much trouble understanding his thick Ayrshire accent that he rarely receives direct answers to his questions when he speaks in the Commons chamber.

Reporters at Hansard, the official verbatim report of Parliament, struggle with the same problem and pass notes to the SNP backbencher asking him to write out what he said whenever he rises to speak.

Mr Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) told the Press Association: “It first became really clear to me not just when it was ministers looking to respond, but it became a running joke with my colleagues that even if I asked a two-line question Hansard would send me a note asking me to confirm what I said.

“As a matter of course, if you do a speech they ask for your speech notes, but with me it’s even just a question.”

Mr Brown said whenever he gets up to speak, he notices the minister sink back into their green leather bench and put their ear right up against the speaker embedded in it.

“David Davis (the Brexit secretary), he almost laughs when he sees me standing up. You can see him, by default, move his ear to the speaker,” Mr Brown said.

“I think Liam Fox struggles too. There are a few, it’s hard to pick them all out. Margot James struggled one time.

“Sometimes you know if you have caught them out, they hide behind it – they say ‘I didn’t catch what the member said’, and they say they’ll write to me, but my inbox hasn’t been inundated with letters.”

Mr Brown grew up in a village just outside Kilmarnock in the constituency he now represents, and he is proud of his accent.

He made an effort to speak more slowly during Commons debates, but several Tory MPs have confessed that they still cannot follow him.

“I think I have slowed it down and spoke clearly and then other MPs still think I’ve spoken way too fast – so again it’s that perception,” he said.

Picture: PA. MP Alan Brown has a thick Ayrshire accent.