Ministerial Statements

Stephen Mosley Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)]

I might be slightly naive but although there may be incidents of Governments leaking information, there are probably an awful lot more incidents of information being leaked without Ministers’ knowledge. We have to distinguish between deliberate leaking and the response to a leak that could be sensitive and might require a Minister to go to the press, on the radio or in front of the television cameras before making a statement to Parliament.

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend makes a good point but at the end of the day we have something called “ministerial responsibility” and the ministerial code.

Tonight’s motion allows us to draw a line in the sand. I am not naive enough to believe that it will stop all Government leaking completely, but were we to pass the motion, it would be an effective weapon in the House’s armoury against an over-mighty Executive. I want to praise the work of the Procedure Committee, led by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), which, after our debate on 20 July 2010, worked extremely hard on this issue and produced an excellent report and a series of first-class recommendations. Every word in the motion comes from the recommendations in that excellent report.

I shall quote from the summary of the Committee’s report—its first of the Session—which sums up the issue extremely well:

“Parliament should be at the centre of national debate. Too often details of important government statements appear in the press before they are made to Parliament. Such leaks adversely affect the ability of Members of Parliament to scrutinise the Government on behalf of their constituents. At present, it is the Ministerial Code that sets out the requirement that important announcements be made to Parliament first. However, the Ministerial Code is enforced by the Prime Minister and not by Parliament. We do not believe that it is acceptable for the Government to regulate itself in this way. The House must be responsible for holding Ministers to account when they fail to honour their obligations to Parliament. We therefore propose that the House should have its own protocol which states that the most important government announcements must be made to Parliament before they are made elsewhere.”

The Committee goes on to recommend:

“Such a protocol must be enforced if it is to be effective. We recommend that complaints by Members that the protocol has been breached should be made to the Speaker. Where a case is not clear-cut, or when the alleged leak is particularly serious, the Speaker should be able to refer the matter to the Committee on Standards and Privileges for an in-depth investigation.”

I agree with every word of the Procedure Committee’s recommendations, which sum up the issue extremely well.

Mr Speaker, on your first election to your high office, you said that

“when Ministers have key policy statements to make, the House must be the first to hear them, and they should not be released beforehand.”—[Official Report, 24 June 2009; Vol. 494, c. 797.]

You could not, Sir, have been clearer. I commend you on the large number of urgent questions that you have accepted, tabled by Back Benchers and Front Benchers alike, holding the Government to account when they have not properly released information to this House first. However, it was your predecessor, Betty Boothroyd—Speaker Boothroyd, as she then was—who said in her farewell address:

“This is the chief forum of the nation—today, tomorrow and, I hope, for ever.”—[Official Report, 26 July 2000; Vol. 354, c. 1114.]

This is our chance to say: are we going to hold Her Majesty’s Government to account for the principle, which they uphold in their own ministerial code, that it is this Chamber, where the elected representatives of the British people are gathered together, that should be the first place to hear of major new Government policy initiatives? Should it be “The Andrew Marr Show” on Sunday, the “Today” programme on Radio 4 in the morning or ITV’s “Daybreak”; or should it be the Chamber of the House of Commons? Would it not be wonderful to see the Public Gallery full of journalists eagerly anticipating the Government’s latest policy announcement, made here first, on the Floor of the House? Instead of which, under this coalition Government, the bad practices of the Blair Government and the Government before them are being increasingly enhanced, such that hon. Members are often the last to hear of new Government policy initiatives, not the first. When our constituents contact us to ask, “What’s the Government initiative on this?”, we are often the last to know, so we cannot respond.

However, it would also be an effective tool against the over-mighty arm of the Executive if the ordinary representatives of the people—not unelected and unaccountable journalists, hard working and well intentioned as they may be, but we the people gathered here in this tremendously prestigious place—were the first to have a go at putting questions to the Ministers of the Crown. We have the honour to represent our constituents. We can use this opportunity tonight, by passing this simple motion, to say to the Government: “Uphold your own ministerial code and let the people’s representatives know first whenever any new major Government policy announcement is made.”

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I warmly commend the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) not only on the motion, but on the work that he has done on this issue since he was first elected. There are many others who count among the saints on these issues; there are also many who count among the non-saints. Contrary to what was said by the hon. Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley), who is sitting next to him, the truth of the matter is that, in practice, many Ministers, and in particular their special advisers and those organising “the grid” at No. 10 Downing street, spend a great deal of time deciding when it is best to announce something. If it is unremittingly good news, they do it in Parliament; if it is unremittingly bad news, they try to hide it in a written ministerial statement to Parliament; and if it is a bit streaky—a bit of good, a bit of bad—they will do it outside Parliament, before the House has sat, so that the difficult bits are forgotten and they can get away with the good briefing that they have organised.

[Stephen Mosley]

Is the hon. Gentleman speaking from experience?

[Chris Bryant]

I had thought that the hon. Gentleman would say that, but I must confess that when I was a Minister, I was never in charge of anything that was interesting enough for anyone to make any announcements about it. I suspect that even if I had wanted to make an announcement, I should have been in difficulty.