EU Referendum: Civil Service Guidance Debate
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Lord Jackson of Peterborough
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EU Referendum: Civil Service Guidance
Lord Jackson of Peterborough 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
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
Would a reasonable and fair-minded person not conclude that having been rebuffed in their attempts last September to alter on a sui generis basis the purdah rules relating to the referendum, the Government have come back and undermined the sovereignty of this House by using the civil service to achieve the very same objective?
Matthew Hancock
No, on the contrary. This guidance is a precise consequence of the Prime Minister’s decision to allow Ministers to campaign to leave. If the Prime Minister had not decided to allow Ministers to remain in the Government but to campaign to leave the European Union against the recommendation of the Government, such rules would not be necessary and we would not have had to publish them. This is a direct consequence of the Prime Minister’s decision to allow that debate to take place and to allow Ministers to take one or other side of the debate.