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Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle has launched an investigation into Liz Truss’s top team over “bullying” claims, a minister has said. Transport Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan told Sky News: “I have no doubt that Mr Speaker will look into these issues and it is for him to make the final dissemination”. But she added: “It is never acceptable for people to be manhandled or bullied into voting.”
Yesterday, it was claimed that Tory backbenchers had been bullied and physically “manhandled” during a vote on fracking yesterday.
Labour’s motion to ban the practice of fracking was defeated by 230 votes to 326, a Government majority of 96.
Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle tweeted: “Just seen Tory whips manhandling a crying Tory MP into their lobby for fracking.
“You couldn’t make this toxic stuff up, nasty to see the Tories at work, if this is how they treat their MPs spare a thought for the country.”
Yesterday, Deputy chief whip Craig Whittaker had warned that the vote was “not a vote on fracking” but instead was a “confidence motion in the Government”.
But this morning, when asked whether or not the vote was a confidence motion, Ms Trevelyan said: “No, yesterday was an opposition day debate.”
She added: “What it was was a very important vote”.
This comes as the Prime Minister battles mounting dissent from within her party.
Her premiership appears to be on the brink of collapse, with dozens of Tory MPs understood to have submitted letters of no confidence in their leader.
However, party rules currently mean that a vote of confidence cannot be held until the Prime Minister has been in charge for 12 months.
Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 committee, is holding a crunch meeting with officers on the committee to discuss Ms Truss’s future.
One Cabinet minister supportive of the Prime Minister told The Times: “It’s terminal, the rancour in the parliamentary party is too much. She can’t recover from this.”
Meanwhile, Tory MP Simon Hoare told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Ms Truss has just “12 hours” to save her job.
He added: “I think today and tomorrow are crunch days. I have never known – OK, I’ve only been an MP for seven years – but a growing sense of pessimism in all wings of the Tory party.
“Usually it’s one or the other, but to have it across the party should be ringing alarm bells in both Number 10 and Number 11.”
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