Ministerial Code: Policy Announcements

Debate between Laura Trott and Nick Thomas-Symonds

Tuesday 29th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on whether Ministers disclosing policies to the media before the Budget are in contravention of the ministerial code’s statement that the most important announcements of Government policy should be made, in the first instance, in Parliament.

[The Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Nick Thomas-Symonds)]

Mr Speaker, I reassure you that what you said yesterday, and indeed what you said a moment ago, has been heard not just by me but across Government.

The Government take their obligations to this House very seriously. Yesterday, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury made a statement to the House on the fiscal rules, in which he made it clear that details will be announced to the House in the Chancellor’s Budget statement tomorrow, alongside an economic and fiscal forecast produced by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility. Treasury Ministers have also answered questions in the House this morning.

The Chancellor will come before the House tomorrow to set out in detail the Government’s Budget to fix the foundations of our economy, and the House will then have a further four days of debate on the measures announced in that Budget. Throughout it all, Members of this House will see a Government who are committed to fixing the foundations to deliver the change our country so desperately needs. This Labour Government will invest in Britain’s future so that we can rebuild the national health service and our country, while ensuring that working people do not face higher taxes in their payslips.

[Laura Trott]

The response from No. 10 yesterday, and Labour’s whole argument, seems to be, “We did it because you guys did it.” But I am old enough to remember a fresh-faced Prime Minister coming into Downing Street and promising change. Labour justifying its actions based on things that the Conservatives have done does not seem like the change we were promised, does it? We are learning the lessons of why we lost the election, but this Government seem to be taking lessons from the worst bits of our record. And not just ours—from the last Labour Government, too. It is like the greatest hits of Government mistakes being replayed in just 100 days.

Cronyism? Is it Blair? No, it is the fresh-faced Labour Government giving civil service jobs to donors. A gross betrayal of pensioners? Is it Brown? No, it is the new Chancellor deciding that those on £13,000 are rich and do not need their winter fuel payments. Rampant politicisation of our institutions? Was this not something Labour accused Boris Johnson of? No, it is the Chancellor again, who said this weekend that the ex-Prime Minister and ex-Chancellor will have to answer to the Office for Budget Responsibility, despite the OBR saying that the report has nothing to do with previous Ministers and led The Times to argue that the OBR has been reduced

“to the provisional wing of the Treasury press office.”

Disrespectful statements emanating from No.10 about your decisions, Mr Speaker? Not the Conservative party, but the No. 10 press office, just yesterday. And potentially breaching the ministerial code with abandon about Budget leaks? Right again, it is this Government.

This Government’s false piety has been breached comprehensively by the Downing Street passes scandal and crony appointments to the civil service, and their hypocrisy has been laid bare for all to see. Yet still they bleat on about the Tories like some broken spell they mutter over and over again in an attempt to conjure up the old magic, but it is not going to work. Labour is so obsessed with playing political games that its Members find themselves going over the Budget, simultaneously claiming that the Conservatives spent too much, but also spent too little. It is nonsense.

The question that I want to ask the Government today is who is going to take responsibility for the Budget leaks? What assessment have the Government made of whether this is a breach of the ministerial code?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

As I have said, I have the deepest respect for this House and its Members. The coming days will be very important to debate the Budget in full. I am sure right hon. and hon. Members will forgive me if I have a degree of cynicism about the Conservative party’s new-found passion for parliamentary conventions, given the number of times it failed in its 14 years in office to update the House ahead of major announcements.

The truth is that Conservative Members are desperate to speak about anything other than the appalling mess in which they left our national finances. There are many groups of people who I would listen to on budget management, but certainly not Members of the party that crashed the economy. We would think they might have learned some lessons from attacking independent financial institutions, but they have not. The shadow Chancellor and the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury are attacking the Office for Budget Responsibility once again.

Families in my constituency and across the country are still paying higher rents and mortgage costs because of the mini-Budget two years ago that created and wreaked such havoc on our economy. Unlike the Conservative party, this Government will never play fast and loose with the nation’s finances. Tomorrow we will see a Budget focused on investment, to get the economy moving again. This Government will take the long-term decisions needed to rebuild Britain and fix our schools, hospitals and our broken roads. The Conservatives have not changed. All they offer is decline and more austerity, with working people paying the price.