EU Referendum: Civil Service Guidance Debate
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Sarah Wollaston
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EU Referendum: Civil Service Guidance
Sarah Wollaston Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Matthew Hancock
I do not understand the premise of the question, because we are putting forward the positive case for remaining in a reformed European Union.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
Will the Minister set out what the harm would be in allowing full transparency of these data? Surely there would be much greater harm if at the end of the referendum we were left with people feeling that it had been an unfair process.
Matthew Hancock
The challenge of taking a position other than the one the Government have taken is that it would require civil servants to do work that was not in support of the Government’s position. The Government have a position, and it is part of the civil service code, and it is put into law in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, that civil servants should support the position of the Government. It would put civil servants in a very difficult position if we were to do anything other than that.