Urgent Question becomes hopeful punt as stand-in works his dull magic

By sheer coincidence, it’s five years ago this week that Dennis Skinner – the veteran Labour MP for Bolsover – was thrown out of the Commons for referring to David Cameron as “Dodgy Dave”. The Speaker at the time, John Bercow, considered it unparliamentary for an MP to fling around such a baseless insult. What a pity for Mr Skinner that he lost his seat at the 2019 election. If he’d been sitting in the Commons yesterday, he could have called Mr Cameron anything he liked.

This was because Labour had put down an Urgent Question about Mr Cameron’s attempts to lobby ministers on behalf of Greensill Capital. Shortly before he entered Downing Street in 2010, Mr Cameron had predicted that corporate lobbying of ministers was “the next big scandal waiting to happen”. And now, it seems, he may well be proving himself right.

In truth, though, it wasn’t really Mr Cameron whom Labour were out to get yesterday. It was Rishi Sunak, one of the ministers Mr Cameron had approached. “The Chancellor,” cried Anneliese Dodds from the Opposition front bench, “told David Cameron he would ‘push’ his team to amend emergency loan schemes to suit Cameron’s new employer.”

Ms Dodds had prepared a lot of uncomfortable questions for Mr Sunak. Unfortunately for her, she couldn’t ask him any of them – because he wasn’t there.

When George Osborne was chancellor, and wanted to duck out of an awkward Urgent Question, he used to send an unflappable stand-in: David Gauke. These days the cry is no longer “Uncork the Gauke” but “Instal Paul” – because taking Mr Sunak’s place was Paul Scully, a junior minister from the business department.

Officially, the rationale for sending Mr Scully was that Greensill had been approved as a lender for the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme – which, insisted Mr Scully, made it a matter for the Business department, rather than the Treasury.

Still, whatever the reason, he proved to be the perfect man for the job. He was calm, on top of his brief, and, most important of all, exceptionally dull – thus making it impossible for the Opposition to get a rise out of him.

They did their best, of course. “The Chancellor is frit!” fumed Ms Dodds.

“If he had nothing to fear, he’d be here!” snapped Wes Streeting (Lab, Ilford North). “This just stinks!” shouted Tan Singh Dhesi (Lab, Slough). The Urgent Question soon began to feel like a hopeful punt, rather than a carefully plotted attack.

Mr Scully reminded them that the Government had ordered an inquiry into the Greensill lobbying row. “Sounds like a whitewash to me,” grumbled Jon Trickett (Lab, Hemsworth). You had to admire his efficiency. In the past, Opposition MPS used to wait until an inquiry had actually taken place before dismissing it as a whitewash. These days, there’s no such hanging about.