LINDSAY Hoyle, the Speaker of the House of Commons, has not reacted at all well to Rishi Sunak's decision to announce that his government is going to burn down the planet by giving a press conference at Downing Street instead of first making the announcement to Parliament.

A spokesperson for the Speaker said: "If he had the power, the Speaker would recall the House immediately - and he is writing to the Prime Minister today to express that view in the strongest possible terms.

"This is a major policy shift, and it should have been announced when the house was sitting. Members with very different views on this issue have expressed their disquiet on the way this has been handled, especially as the Commons rose early last night, so there was plenty of time for this statement to be made.

"Instead, the unelected House of Lords will have the opportunity to scrutinise this change in direction this afternoon, when it hears the government's response to a private notice question on this issue.

"This is not the way to do business. Ministers are answerable to MPs – we do not have a presidential system here.

READ MORE: Rishi Sunak net zero changes could delay Scottish climate action plan

"The House of Commons is where laws are made, national debates are had – and where statements should be made."

MPs rise for their conference recess tomorrow, meaning Sunak will avoid Parliamentary scrutiny for this major policy shift until MPs return in October. That was clearly his intention.

Parliament had sat for two days this week prior to Sunak's supreme dictator style pronouncement surrounded by British flags. The changes could easily have been announced on either of those days.

Unfortunately, this is very far from the first time that the Speaker has blasted this government for not telling Parliament first about a major change to policy. Unless there are some meaningful repercussions then Sunak and his ministers have no incentive to listen to him.

The Speaker issuing statements didn't stop them before, and it certainly won't stop them doing it again. They really don't care.

The National: Rishi Sunak would rather brief the media than face MPsRishi Sunak would rather brief the media than face MPs

In October 2021, when Sunak was Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lindsay Hoyle criticised ministers for revealing Budget spending pledges to journalists before officially announcing policies in the Commons. Hoyle told junior Treasury minister Simon Clarke that the government was treating Parliament in a "discourteous manner" by allowing news outlets to see Budget plans before MPs.

The Speaker added then: "This House will not be taken for granted, it's not right for everybody to briefed, it's not more important to go on the news in the morning, it's more important to come here."

The Tories must have listened to this criticism and said to themselves: "Yeah, right, whatevah." Because it has had absolutely no effect on them at all. Lindsay Hoyle's strongly worded letter will be filed in the bin - and won't even be recycled.

This dismal episode marks yet another milestone in the march of Westminster to irrelevance as an effective means of holding the government of the day to account.

If Humza Yousaf had pulled a similar shabby trick in order to avoid facing MSPs in the chamber of Holyrood, Douglas Ross and his team of untrained seals would honk and bark loudly in condemnation. BBC Scotland would run with the story for a day and might even forget about the ferries for five minutes.

READ MORE: Scotland to Europe ferry: Talks underway to bring back route

The Westminster Parliament is far more powerful than Holyrood so it should be of grave concern to us all that it is effectively being hollowed out by an arrogant government with a track record of introducing authoritarian and anti-democratic measures.

But this story will be passed over by most of the Scottish media, which is more concerned with keeping a lid on Scottish independence than in defending the quality of democratic oversight in this British state it is determined to keep Scotland a part of.

How the Scottish Child Payment is transforming Scotland

In other news, which most of the Scottish media will do its utmost to overlook, calculations carried out by Professor Danny Dorling, of Oxford University's School of Geography and the Environment, demonstrate that the Scottish Child Payment has seen the biggest reduction in inequality caused by a single policy change since the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

Dorling said: "For each country, for each year that we have data, [OECD data] tells us how big the gap between rich and poor is.

"When the Scottish Child Payment was raised to £25 and extended to all children under 16, I just did a fairly quick calculation – not quite the back of an envelope – but I worked out how it changed the inequality for children in Scotland, if you assume that the money is actually claimed by those who are eligible to claim it.

"Two out of every seven children in Scotland, their families will get it and that has an effect on changing the inequality level in Scotland, which I don't see in any country for which there has been data for the last 40 years."

READ MORE: SNP brand Efta 'halfway house' as party to publish paper on EU policy

He added: "It’s bigger than anything since [the fall of the Berlin Wall], but that may well have been as big but we don’t know because we don't have brilliant data for that. It basically means that no child in Scotland should go cold or hungry by this Christmas, if this is taken up. It's a remarkable story and the second remarkable story is how it hasn't been reported."

But it's not remarkable at all to anyone who is familiar with the media in Scotland. The media in Scotland is shockingly unrepresentative of the population it purports to serve, and for the most part sees its job as being to fend off independence and protect the British state; and that means never ever allowing the people of Scotland to imagine that Scotland could possibly do things better than Westminster. So don't expect Professor Dorling to appear on Reporting Scotland any time soon.