Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Kim Johnson and Yvette Cooper

2nd reading
Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kim Johnson]

Okay, Conservative Members can make a lot of noise, because that is all they ever do. Thanks.

Is now really the time to decimate rights and standards at work, environmental protections, and health and safety? Conservative Members should consider just how destructive this will be, and just how angry people will be with this wholesale attack on their basic rights and protections. This Bill is not fit for purpose and it should not go ahead.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. At noon, the new Prime Minister promised “integrity, professionalism and accountability”. At 5 pm, he reappointed the former Home Secretary, who resigned from the post just one week ago, saying that she had broken the ministerial code and admitting that she had sent confidential documents outside Government from a private email.

In the urgent question last week, I raised a series of questions about whether there had been an official audit to check what other documents the former, and current, Home Secretary might have circulated from personal emails, because there were suggestions in the media that there had been others; and whether the right hon. and learned Lady’s resignation letter was in fact factually correct, because her account was different from briefings to the media and the statement by the Minister for the Cabinet Office last week.

May I ask you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to help us to get urgent answers to these questions? The Home Secretary has access to the most sensitive information of all, relating to our national security. We cannot have someone careless and slapdash in that job. How on earth does it meet standards of integrity and professionalism to reappoint someone who has just broken the ministerial code, and has just breached all standards of professional behaviour in a great office of state? It looks as if the new prime minister has put party before country. Our national security and public safety are too important for this.