Ministerial Code Debate

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Department: Cabinet Office

Ministerial Code

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts
Monday 26th April 2021

(2 years, 11 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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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

Wera Hobhouse Portrait Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD) [V]
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The Minister just said that public scrutiny is always welcome, so does he not agree that instead of all the reports relying on leaks in the newspapers and on accusations in Dominic Cummings’ blog, the best way forward would be to get all the facts straight in an independent public inquiry into the Government’s handling of the pandemic? Will he urge the Prime Minister to go ahead with it without delay?

Michael Gove Portrait Michael Gove
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The hon. Lady makes the very fair point that we need, in due course, an independent public inquiry into dealing with the pandemic, but I also think it is important that we concentrate now on the successful vaccine roll-out and on making sure that the road map on the lifting of restrictions, to which so many people are quite rightly looking forward, is in place. There will be time for an independent public inquiry and there will be lessons to be learned; mistakes have been made. But I think it is important that we concentrate now on making sure that our economy is restored to health, that public services get back to the level that they should be, and that we deal with the virus once and for all.