In the report which was debated in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, only a short passage is devoted to it, but the subject dominated the entire debate: the manners in the House. While the report – drawn up by a working group of MPs – mainly deals with how political groups could better monitor the cabinet, the debate mainly focused on what MPs should and should not say in the House of Representatives.
In recent months there has been a lot of talk about statements made by MPs. For example, a debate was suspended in November after Pepijn van Houwelingen (Forum for Democracy) said to Sjoerd Sjoerdsma (D66): “Your time will come, because there will be tribunals.” In January, a corona debate was halted after Gideon van Meijeren (FVD) called for civil disobedience. In the debate on the government statement, PVV leader Geert Wilders spoke about “importing cowardly packs of Arabs and Africans”.
Threat and Harassment
Most MPs agreed on Wednesday that the President of the House should intervene (more strongly) in such statements and that MPs should also hold each other accountable. “The Chamber is the place where people should freely exchange views,” said D66 party leader Jan Paternotte. “Precisely that is less and less possible if there is threat and intimidation here.”
Together with the ChristenUnie, D66 proposed to give MPs an official warning if they make threats during a debate. If they don’t take back their words or even continue on the same footing, the chairman may deprive them of the floor or ban them from the meeting, the parties suggested.
JA21 and FVD reasoned the other way around: if you prohibit MPs from making certain statements, you are actually restricting the freedom of expression. “We should not ban words,” said Joost Eerdmans of JA21. Gideon van Meijeren said: “Since the new chairman took office, less and less has been allowed to be said in parliament. She uses her powers to silence MPs because she doesn’t like the content.”
FVD would not actually participate in the debate, just like the PVV, but Van Meijeren walked into the Chamber a few minutes before his speaking time. He wanted to say something anyway, because he felt that freedom of expression “is at stake”.
Even before he had spoken to Meijeren, Renske Leijten (SP) stood at the interruption microphone to announce that she was leaving the debate. She thought it was disrespectful that Van Meijeren had not listened to the other MPs and had used his own speaking time.
For a change, Chamber President Vera Bergkamp was in ‘section K’, where ministers normally sit. The MPs continued to call her “chairman”. This occasionally caused some confusion, because that is what they called Henk Nijboer, who was chairman during this debate. Sitting next to Bergkamp was SGP Member of Parliament Kees van der Staaij, chairman of the working group that prepared the report on strengthening the role of the House.
inadmissible
When Bergkamp was given the floor, she mainly went back to her note on parliamentary manners, which she sent to the House at the beginning of February. She said she notices that “the boundaries of what is allowed” have shifted in the House in recent years. “We have come to find normal what is no longer normal.”
The Rules of Procedure state the following: “Each Member shall conduct himself in the assembly in a manner which shows mutual respect and which does not detract from the dignity of the House.” In her memorandum, Bergkamp suggested making the Regulations ‘more explicit’ that intimidation and threats in the House of Representatives are ‘inadmissible’. During Wednesday’s debate, she said this does not mean there will be a “language police” or a “banned dictionary”. “I will always look at the situation, at the context.”
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