Rishi Sunak says Lindsay Hoyle’s Commons conduct ‘very concerning’

“Parliament is an important place for us to have these debates. And just because some people may want to stifle that with intimidation or aggressive behaviour, we should not bend to that and change how parliament works. That’s a very slippery slope. It’s not the right way to go.”

Sir William Shawcross, who reviewed the government’s counter-extremism programme last year, said the failings of the Prevent scheme had allowed Hamas supporters to intimidate MPs.

He said: “I am now seriously concerned that Prevent is simply failing to challenge the pro-Hamas campaign that is running riot on our streets. In my review I explicitly warned the government that the UK Hamas support network urgently had to be confronted. Yet since then, the problem has been left to worsen.

“Prevent should use all available means to disrupt Hamas propagandists in Britain. In the current climate, Islamist ideology is being left to capture the hearts of young people. This poses a grave danger to our country.”

A Home Office spokesman said the government had made “significant progress to deliver a strengthened Prevent”.

A number of MPs have expressed concerns about their safety and warned that threats from “Islamist extremists” were stifling democracy.

The Conservative MP Andrew Percy criticised the police for allowing pro-Palestinian protesters to project the slogan “from the river to the sea” onto the Elizabeth Tower, which houses Big Ben, on Wednesday night. He said: “That message says no Jew is welcome in the state of Israel or in that land. This is going to continue happening because we’re not dealing with it.”

“From the river to the sea” was projected onto Big Ben

Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister, said: “We have allowed our streets to be dominated by Islamist extremists, and British Jews and others to be too intimidated to walk through central London week after week. Now we’re allowing Islamist extremists to intimidate British members of parliament. It has to stop.”

Hoyle apologised again to MPs on Thursday for allowing a vote on the Labour amendment but said he had acted because he wanted to protect them.

“I never ever want to go through a situation where I pick up a phone to find a friend, of whatever side, has been murdered by terrorists,” he said. “I have a duty of care, and I say that, if my mistake is looking after members I am guilty.”

More than 30 Tory MPs have signed a motion calling for Hoyle to quit, but there are also signs of a concerted effort to support him.

Stephen Flynn, the Westminster leader of the SNP, joined calls to oust the Speaker

JESSICA TAYLOR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Senior cabinet ministers rallied round. Michael Gove, the levelling-up secretary, said MPs should “respect the ref”. Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, said that Hoyle should not be the “fall guy”.

Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, said Hoyle was a decent man. She declined to commit to giving MPs a debate and a vote on his future.

Ben Wallace, the former defence secretary, urged his colleagues to “be careful what you wish for”, adding: “I have served under three Speakers [and] Lindsay Hoyle is head and shoulders above the previous two [John Bercow and Michael Martin]. He is not a bully. He is a bipartisan and fair man who protects backbenchers. He has my full support.”

Hoyle is understood to believe he has enough support from senior Conservatives to stay on as Speaker. Some ministers also believe that the heat has gone out of the attempt to remove Hoyle from office.

Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, denied threatening the Speaker to persuade him to help Labour avoid a rebellion over its stance on a ceasefire in Gaza. He said he had simply urged Hoyle to break with parliamentary precedent so that MPs could have a broad debate on a range of positions.

But the SNP leader in Westminster, Stephen Flynn, said his party had lost confidence in the Speaker and would continue to push for him to step down. “As I have expressed to you privately, we do not on these benches therefore believe that you can continue in your role,” he told him in the Commons.

Analysis: Can Sir Lindsay Hoyle survive as Speaker?

By Oliver Wright

On Thursday morning Sir Lindsay Hoyle’s position as Speaker of the House of Commons looked bleak, with MPs lining up to criticise him and call for his resignation.

By the evening, however, that position had subtly altered. His heartfelt apology to the House for his mistake appeared to calm tensions, while supporters of the Speaker, including cabinet ministers, came to his defence.

Senior figures in the Conservative Party say the change of heart was a result of several factors.

Part of the anger against Hoyle resulted from claims circulating on Wednesday night that he had given way to Labour after a direct threat about his future should the party win the next election. This was categorically denied and senior MPs said they now accepted that Hoyle’s actions, while wrong, came out of genuine concerns for MPs’ safety rather than a baser political motive.

There was also a concern among a large number of Tory MPs that they were turning their fire on the wrong target. They worried that by attacking Hoyle they were letting Starmer off the hook for his attempt to avoid asking his MPs to take a stance on Gaza that many are deeply uncomfortable with.

Others made the point that, unlike his predecessor John Bercow, Hoyle had largely been a fair Speaker with a good reputation for upholding the rights of backbenchers.

But if some of the anger was dissipating on the Tory side, the same was not true of the SNP. Stephen Flynn, the party’s Westminster leader, made clear he would not accept Hoyle’s apology and is demanding a formal vote of confidence.

That vote may well happen, and could yet make Hoyle’s position untenable. This is because even if he has the eventual — if tacit — support of the government, it will be hard to carry on if the third largest party in the Commons no longer accepts his neutrality.

Hoyle may be in a stronger position than he was on Thursday morning, but he is not out of the woods yet.