Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor

Calum Miller Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Smart]

Nobody should be above the law, and nobody should be above scrutiny. When good people get together, there is a willingness to embrace creativity and the nerdery of parliamentary procedures so that we can find a way to get to the truth that we need to get to.

Trust in our politics is vital, and trust in our institutions is further eroded every time we have one of these debates. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) talked about the impact on the reputation of this House and the vital role of trust in politics. There are too many people involved in politics for whom a lack of trust in politics is really useful. The stoking of division and mistrust means that there is space for voices that, in my view, are not welcome and we should reject. It is in all our interests and the whole country’s interest for there to be trust in our institutions and our political set-up.

During the debate we have been reminded of the need for proper processes to be in place. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) reminded us, not everybody can be relied on to be a good bloke. Many of our systems are based on gentlemen’s agreements and just expecting people to be a good bloke—and as has been repeatedly proven, it is simply not the case that people will be.

[Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)]

In serving for a number of years as a senior civil servant, I experienced in Whitehall the impression that the monarchy should be protected and that nothing should be done to embarrass the royal family. I hope the materials we are seeking the release of through today’s Humble Address will ensure that we can scrutinise whether civil servants’ ability to check whether Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was an appropriate person to be a trade envoy was impeded, and will shed light on the relationship that should exist between Whitehall and the monarchy in the future.

[Lisa Smart]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. We have seen some press reports about civil servants who were doing their job and absolutely rightly questioning some of the expenses that were being put through, but they were overruled. That clearly is not good enough and not acceptable, and it is not what we should expect from our institutions and establishment. I completely agree about the importance of being clear about what we expect when somebody takes on a public role at cost to the taxpayer.

We should have very high standards. We should, as the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) said, talk about how we can ensure that those with power are held to account. She was entirely right in the points she made about what we do with this information, where we go with it and how we build from here.

My hon. Friend the Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) made a really strong speech in which he gave very constructive suggestions to the Minister of measures that we Liberal Democrats would support in bringing about change to the system.