Edinburgh MP trolls English counterparts in Parliament over rugby win
A Scottish MP has asked John Bercow to help him 'gloat' to colleagues about Scotland's rugby triumph over England.
Labour’s Ian Murray asked the Commons Speaker how he could find out which English MPs were in his Edinburgh South constituency to “drown their sorrows” following the Six Nations clash at Murrayfield.
Scotland ended their decade-long wait for success in the fixture with a 25-13 victory at the weekend.
Mr Bercow often has to deal with complaints about ministers and others failing to inform MPs they will be attending their constituencies on official business.
Mr Murray played on these complaints as he teased English MPs about the result.
Raising a point of order, he said: “There’s a convention in this House when a Member of Parliament visits someone else’s constituency that they should write to them to inform them that they’ve done so.
“Many Members of Parliament from England may have stayed in, dined or indeed drowned their sorrows in my constituency on Saturday after the rugby.
“I don’t really want them all to write to me but I wonder if there’s a mechanism to find out who they were so I could write to them to remind them not only of the convention, but to maybe just gloat about the Calcutta Cup success of Scotland.”
Mr Bercow said Mr Murray had raised the matter with “considerable ingenuity and a sense of humour”, noting: “The convention, of course, applies only to visits that are undertaken on official business.”