Civil Service Impartiality
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Marcus Fysh(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)
The House and the country should know that on 7 September 2019 I witnessed Sue Gray, then permanent secretary at the Department of Finance in Northern Ireland, discuss with a special adviser to the UK Cabinet Office how to exclude solutions other than high alignment with EU law and regulation from consideration by the Government in respect of Northern Ireland and the withdrawal agreement. A month later, the Government proposed the Northern Ireland protocol, which subjected Northern Ireland to EU law and regulation. Since then, Sue Gray has been the civil servant specifically responsible for advising on Union considerations in Government. It was reported this week that Sue Gray was present at the briefing of Cabinet Ministers on the Prime Minister’s Windsor framework, which, among other things, appears to confirm and embed the application of EU law and regulation in Northern Ireland—
Mr Speaker
Do you want to go out? No, right. I pulled up a Member on the other side about this, because once you go on and on there must be a question. I hope there is a question now.
Points of Order
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Marcus Fysh(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
That’s great. The matter the hon. Lady raises is not a point of order on which the Chair has responsibilities. I am sure she knows that there are other ways in which to pursue this matter, and I am sure she will do so.
Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Many of my constituents and their families have given money to a charity called St Margaret’s Hospice on the basis that it would spend that money on an in-patient unit in Yeovil, but it has closed that unit. Unfortunately, the Charity Commission investigation that I helped to get under way was not able to prove “bad faith”. What avenues are open to me to engage with Ministers to examine the way in which the Charity Commission legal frameworks operate to make sure that such potential cases of mis-selling do not go unpunished in the future?
Mr Speaker
I thank the hon. Member for giving me notice of the point of order. He has certainly got it on the record. I am sure that the concerns will have been heard by those on the Treasury Bench and somebody will take up the issue.