Ministerial Appointments: Vetting and Managing Conflicts of Interest Debate
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Chris Bryant
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Ministerial Appointments: Vetting and Managing Conflicts of Interest
Chris Bryant Excerpts(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Jeremy Quin
As I have made clear, I cannot imagine circumstances under which my right hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon would not wish to be fully transparent with the independent adviser. That will be necessary for the independent adviser to do his job and it will enable him to establish the facts.
Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I will not get into the specifics of the individuals concerned but, following on from the question from the hon. Member for Guildford (Angela Richardson), I want to know why we do not yet have in the public domain the financial interests of all Ministers. The list on the website is 243 days old. It is not even an accurate list of Ministers. It is not even an accurate list of the last set of Ministers or the one before that.
This Government have been in place for 90 days. There are now Ministers who were not even a Member of either House back then and who do not appear anywhere. Surely, the public ought to know within a week or so of a Minister being appointed what all their financial interests are. Why can we not have that? Why must we wait another three months—that is what the Minister said earlier—before we find out all the financial interests of Ministers? We should know that now.
Jeremy Quin
It may be three months, but it may be three hours. My understanding is that it will be by May. I cannot commit to a date because I am not the independent adviser. He has work to do to publish it, but my understanding is that an updated list of financial interests will be published before his report is out in May.