Points of Order

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his point of order and for placing that on the record.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am very grateful to the Secretary of State, and I am grateful for advance notice that he would be giving a point of order, although not of the exact detail.

This is extremely important, because while there is no set process, there is a ministerial code, which clearly states that commercially sensitive information should not be given out to the media prior to being given to Parliament. To reiterate, on that day, yes, we were given a hard copy of the SDR 90 minutes before the statement, but I was already in the Chamber for the urgent questions arising from that situation—officials would have known that we were in the Chamber—and was unable to read it. However, at 8 o’clock that morning, senior people from the biggest defence companies in the land received a hard copy of the SDR.

The key thing is that, on the point of order on 2 June, I said to the Secretary of State that the situation was unacceptable, and he justified the procedure on the fact that, at the time when I was a Minister—I quote him—

“We had no advance copy of the defence review.”—[Official Report, 2 June 2025; Vol. 768, c. 40.]

His justification was something that is not the case, and I said that in my immediate response to him. I am glad that, three weeks later, he has corrected the record.

We have war in Ukraine and all the instability in the middle east; there should be consensus on matters of national security, and we should not play games on the most important strategic defence review for many years. I hope that we can now draw a line under this, but to enable that, I hope that the Secretary of State will say to his special advisers and officials that they must be as transparent as possible in all pursuant written questions on this matter to which we still await answers and in responses to freedom of information requests.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

The shadow Secretary of State has placed his view on the record. He will understand that that is not a matter for the Chair any further, but I hope that whatever lessons need to be learned will have been learned, and I am sure that, on both sides of the House, that is correct.