Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Angela Rayner and Michael Gove

Monday 22nd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

Despite that love-in, as the Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street has over-promised and under-delivered. Almost 70% of devolved housing funds have not been used, and he has done nothing to tackle rogue landlords. The mayoral model can work, and Sadiq Khan’s affordable housebuilding in London is evidence of that. When did the Secretary of State last meet Andy Street, and did he raise those failures with him?

[Michael Gove]

I talk to Andy Street constantly because he is a model of what a strong Mayor should be. The right hon. Lady talks about housing. There are housing targets set at a regional level—which Mayor missed them by most? Sadiq Khan in London. Which Mayor has exceeded those targets? Andy Street in the west midlands. Sadiq Khan has failed on housing, failed on crime and failed on transport, and he will be kicked out on 2 May.

[Angela Rayner]

Roll on a general election. Sadiq Khan has been building a better London for everyone. If the right hon. Gentleman wants more evidence of Mayors working, he should look up north: Tracy Brabin, Steve Rotheram and Andy Burnham have been bringing transport services back under public control, giving better value for money. In the Tees Valley, we see the opposite. The review into Lord Houchen’s mishandling of Teesworks found

“the principles of spending public money are not being consistently observed.”

So why will the Secretary of State not give the National Audit Office the chance to investigate?

[Michael Gove]

I am sure the right hon. Lady is very, very keen that all sorts of matters are investigated properly by independent figures who can be trusted, but in the Tees Valley Ben Houchen has done more than any other Metro Mayor to bring jobs and investment into his region. The thousands of jobs created in Teesworks stand in stark contrast to Labour’s failure, from London to Liverpool, to bring in the jobs required. Andy Street, I should reinforce, is the single most successful Mayor in the country. That is why both Andy and Ben will be re-elected on 2 May, alongside Conservative Mayors in York and North Yorkshire, the East Midlands and, of course, London.

Extremism Definition and Community Engagement

Debate between Angela Rayner and Michael Gove

Thursday 14th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

I start by thanking the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement, and for his briefing yesterday.

Hateful extremism threatens the safety of our communities and the unity of our country. Everyone, across the House, can agree that it is a serious problem which demands a serious response, so let me say from the outset that when it comes to our national security, when it comes to the threat of radicalisation and when it comes to the toxic scourge of Islamophobia, neo-Nazism, antisemitism or any other corrosive hatred, the whole House can and should work together. The way the Government do this work matters, and the language that we all use is important. I welcome the Secretary of State’s opening comment that it is our diversity, and our values, that make our country stronger.

The Secretary of State is right to raise concerns about the dangers facing our elected representatives. We must be free to represent the views of our constituents. We all have a responsibility to work to extinguish the flames of division, and never to fan them. While it may be part of the nature of our politics for passion sometimes to take centre stage, and while we may challenge and probe these plans today, if the Secretary of State wants to engage going forward, he has my word that we can do so in good faith.

I say challenge because I believe that the Secretary of State has made a mistake in the way in which this policy has been trailed in the last week. I am glad he has now come to the House to give clarification, but it is not right that we have spent the last few days poring over a possible new definition in the papers; it is not right that the Department has leaked the names of groups that may or may not be covered by this definition when, as he rightly says, this work should be based on due diligence; and it is not right that each stage of the recruitment of a new Islamophobia adviser has been mired in controversy. Can the Secretary of State confirm that he has now appointed an adviser?

On today’s announcement, we will scrutinise this new definition, and it will be crucial to see how it is applied in practice, but will the Secretary of State set out how the new centre of excellence will operate and how it will be resourced? How will this new definition work in practice? How exactly will it restrict the Government’s engagement? Will these restrictions relate only to Government engagement, or will they later be extended to other public bodies such as the police and universities?

Given this new definition, the public will rightly be alarmed by the idea that Ministers could have already met extremist groups. Can the Secretary of State shed some light on that? Renewed vigilance and diligence are welcome, particularly in the current climate, but if his own Department now needs to cut ties with extremist groups, that begs the question of why it was working with them in the first place. He said in his statement that the new definition

“will not affect gender-critical campaigners, those with conservative religious beliefs, trans activists, environmental protest groups, or those exercising their proper right to free speech.”

Can he explain which groups it will affect, and where the Government have chosen to draw the line?

This is not the first time that the Government have identified this risk or promised to act. As the Secretary of State mentioned, back at the beginning of 2011 the Conservative Home Secretary told the House:

“ If organisations do not support the values of democracy, human rights, equality before the law, participation in society…we will not work with them and we will not fund them.”—[Official Report, 7 June 2011; Vol. 529, c. 53.]

That prompts another question: why has it taken the Government 13 years to address this? The Secretary of State says that organisations that are clearly extreme have benefited from Government engagement, endorsement and support, and even suggests that those groups have exploited Government engagement. Can he understand how deeply concerning that is to hear? He must explain exactly how it has been allowed to happen.

We know there has been a huge surge in online extremism. Can the Secretary of State give assurances on how that will be dealt with? What action is he taking to work across Government to assess and confront online hate? We know that extremism does not exist in a vacuum, and we need political leadership on this, but a quality of good leadership is to empower others. The Secretary of State says that the Department has been working with faith groups, civil society and local councils, and I agree that they all have a crucial role to play in tackling extremism, but what form has that consultation taken, and will he publish its findings?

On the wider work that is now needed, will the Secretary of State set out whether it will be underpinned by a new cross-Government counter-extremism strategy, given that the last one is now nine years out of date? Will it include action to rebuild the resilience and cohesion of our communities? He mentioned new funding; how much will it be, how will it be allocated, and how will it interact with other funding streams, including those relating to multi-faith dialogue?

I also want to raise a point about hate crime, and how important it is to tackling extremism. We have seen an appalling surge in antisemitism and Islamophobia in recent months, and the previous strategy is now four years out of date. When will the Secretary of State have an updated hate crime action plan? Have Ministers abandoned plans to introduce a new hate crime strategy? Why are the anti-Muslim hatred working group and the antisemitism working group no longer meeting?

We need much stronger action to tackle the corrosive forms of hatred that devastate lives and corrode communities, but today’s statement does not go far enough. Regardless of how workable and effective the new definition and the centre for excellence may be, this announcement will not be enough.

Let me end by echoing the words of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, who have warned that, against the backdrop of growing divisions, it is for political leaders to provide “a conciliatory tone” and to

“pursue policies that bring us together, not risk driving us apart.”

I look forward to working with the Secretary of State on this.

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful to the shadow Secretary of State for the constructive, detailed and consensual approach that she is taking to what are inevitably challenging and difficult issues. I enjoyed the opportunity to talk to her and other Labour colleagues yesterday, and I look forward to working together in the future. I know it is the role of the Opposition to challenge, and I wholeheartedly welcome the constructive way in which that challenge has been issued today.

I agree with the shadow Secretary of State that the danger to elected representatives is growing, and my right hon. Friend the Security Minister has invested time, care and money to countering it. Passion, vigour and determination are all part of the meat of our politics, and nothing that we have said today should take away from our desire to see free speech exercised as energetically as possible.

The shadow Secretary of State mentioned the leaking of some information relating to our work on this issue. I deprecate that leaking, which is a fundamental challenge to the effective operation of government, and a leak inquiry has been commissioned in order to see how some of the information about today’s statement was shared. As a result of my having given the statement, however, there is an opportunity for all of us to scrutinise the detail.

The shadow Secretary of State asked how the centre of excellence will be staffed and funded. Impartial civil servants with training in this area will be supplemented in their work by studies by academics and academic bodies, and we will work with the existing expertise in the homeland security analysis and intelligence unit within the Home Office in order to ensure that all our work is rigorous. We will make sure that if a decision is made to list an organisation as extremist, we will show our working and the evidence that leads us to that conclusion, and the judgment that we have made will be there for everyone to see.

The shadow Secretary of State asked why the Government or arms of the state have unwittingly engaged with extremist organisations in the past. Although the previous definition of extremism was well intentioned and drawn up with care, it was perhaps insufficiently precise and insufficiently policed, so we thought it was appropriate to update it. This follows the Shakeel Begg case, William Shawcross’s independent review of Prevent, and other examples that were brought to the Government’s attention. Having been told by independent figures, the courts and William Shawcross that we needed to look again at our approach, the real sin would have been not to do so and to have stuck to a course that had led to mistakes in the past.

The shadow Secretary of State asked about the wider work on resilience. We will publish a more detailed action plan, which will include funding commitments to support organisations on the ground that build up a greater degree of community resilience, and I look forward to working with her and others in local government to achieve that valuable end.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Debate between Angela Rayner and Michael Gove

2nd reading
Monday 11th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. The Government have been in government for 13 years. We have had six years of these promises, and he is absolutely right that there is more than one way that the Government could have ensured that leaseholders were not treated in this way. The botched drafting of the Bill means we are still waiting to see a single clause that prohibits a single new leasehold property, whether it is a flat or a house.

It was on 30 January this year that the Secretary of State promised my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy),

“we will maintain our commitment to abolish the feudal system of leasehold. We absolutely will. We will bring forward legislation shortly.”—[Official Report, 30 January 2023; Vol. 727, c. 49.]

In February, he said he aimed in the forthcoming King’s Speech

“to introduce legislation to fundamentally reform the system…to end this feudal form of tenure”.—[Official Report, 20 February 2023; Vol. 728, c. 3.]

In May, the then Housing Minister told this House that

“my Department are working flat out”—[Official Report, 23 May 2023; Vol. 733, c. 214.]

on the legislation. If it has taken them this long with not a word to show for it, can they guarantee that they will put their amendments to the House by 30 January next year—a full 12 months after the Secretary of State’s promise at the Dispatch Box?

We have heard the Secretary of State say that it is perfectly normal to bring forward vast swathes of amendments in Committee—believe me, the Committee will be doing some considerable heavy lifting. Having shadowed him through the final stages of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, I would say that perhaps he does think that making endless last-minute amendments to his own Bills is a normal way of legislating, but the anonymous sources close to the Secretary of State may have let the cat out of the bag about the real reason the Bill is so empty when they briefed the press last month. We know from them what he cannot admit today: the Prime Minister was blocking this Bill from the King’s Speech in the face of lobbying from vested interests opposing the reform. In the chaos of this Government, it was added only at the very last minute. We may have heard many warm words, and the Secretary of State was very theatrical about his ambition for reform, but he is stuck in the daily Tory doom loop in which vested interests always come before the national interest.

The truth is that the time wasting and backtracking all go back to the Prime Minister’s desperate attempt to extend the lease on No. 10 Downing Street. The fact is that even if the Government belatedly fix their leasehold house loophole, flat owners will be left out of the picture, yet 70% of all leasehold properties are flats and there are over 600,000 more owner-occupied leasehold flats than houses in England. Having listened to the Secretary of State, those owners will still be wondering just when the Government will fulfil their pledge to them. As I am sure everyone in the House will agree, property law is, by nature, extremely complex, but we cannot and must not lose sight of the daily impact that these laws have on the lives of millions across our country, including over 5 million owners of leasehold properties in England and Wales. I am sure that most of us in the House know what that means in human terms for our constituents.

For most freehold homeowners, ownership means security and control, yet for far too many leaseholders, the reality of home ownership falls woefully short of the dream they were promised. Too many leaseholders face constant struggles with punitive and ever rising ground rents—rent for a home that they actually own, in exchange for which the freeholder needs to do nothing at all. Leaseholders are locked into expensive agreements and face unjustified administration fees and extortionate charges. Conditions are imposed with little or no consultation. For leaseholders also affected by the building safety crisis, the situation is even worse.

[Michael Gove]

The right hon. Lady has made it clear from the Dispatch Box that she opposes excessive ground rents. Can she explain why the Labour leader made it clear at the Labour party conference that he would get new houses built by creating “attractive investment products” that had residential ground rents at their heart? How can it possibly be the case that she intends to deal with excessive ground rents, when the leader of the Labour party wanted to fund new development by pursuing precisely that policy? Which is it: against them or for them?

[Angela Rayner]

I thank the Secretary of State, but he has just used the word “excessive”. If he wants to let me deal with this problem, I am happy to take over and show that I am not just about theatrical performances at the Dispatch Box; I will actually deal with it. He has been given 13 years on the Government Benches and has failed to do that. This Bill still fails to do that, so I would like to see where he will deal with this issue.

Regulation of freeholders has fallen behind that of landlords, leaving leaseholders stripped of the rights enjoyed even by tenants in the private rented sector. Perhaps the Secretary of State can tell us what measures exist that prevent the worst actors in the market from repeatedly ripping off leaseholders in one place after another.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Angela Rayner and Michael Gove

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to face the right hon. Gentleman for our first questions. I hope he enjoyed his party conference, cancelling a meat tax that nobody had planned, abolishing seven bins that do not exist and announcing that they would build a series of transport links that already do exist—not so much conference season as panto season. I shall keep my question to a problem that definitely does exist. One million families are waiting for social housing. How can he justify handing back to the Treasury billions of pounds that are desperately needed to tackle the housing crisis?

[Michael Gove]

It is because we spend our money effectively. The affordable homes programme—the £11.5 billion investment that we are making—will lead, and has led, to investment in social and affordable housing across the country. The right hon. Lady has a challenge when it comes to credibility on social housing. She secured the deputy leadership of her party by saying that the Labour party should be building 100,000 social homes every year, and yet its current target is zero. Why did she retreat?

[Angela Rayner]

The right hon. Gentleman just comes out with flannel—I think he is auditioning for panto season this afternoon. He can dress it up however he likes, but the truth is that he could not spend this vital funding quickly enough in the middle of a housing crisis. It is clear that the Prime Minister shares his disregard for struggling families. In his hour-long speech in Manchester, the Prime Minister did not mention housing a single time—not once—but the Housing Minister did tell conference that renters are not all weed-smoking gangsters, which I am sure the right hon. Gentleman knows all about, as he mentioned gangsters earlier today. Can the Secretary of State assure us that, despite the tone of those remarks, the Renters (Reform) Bill will not be scrapped before the King’s Speech?

[Michael Gove]

Yes, we are bringing reform to the rental market, but I note that at her own party conference the right hon. Lady shared with the public not just her policies but her recipe for a cocktail called Venom, which apparently contains a bottle of vodka, a bottle of Southern Comfort, 10 Blue WKDs and a litre of orange juice. We know what the real lethal cocktail from the Labour party is: a mix of unfunded spending commitments, massive borrowing, greenbelt development and hypocrisy on housing.

Birmingham City Council

Debate between Angela Rayner and Michael Gove

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for the advance copy of his statement today. It has been a while since we faced each other: 804 days, to be exact. A lot has changed since then. We are on our third Prime Minister, our fourth Chancellor and, of course, our sixth different Minister for Housing. They have crashed the economy, families face the worst cost of living for a generation, and mortgage rates have increased nearly fivefold since our last meeting. But one thing has not changed: local government has been pushed to the brink. Birmingham is just the biggest, latest example.

This is a deeply worrying time for people in the city. The issues facing the council are difficult and complex, and administrations of all three major political parties have grappled with them in the years since they emerged. Since May, the new leadership in Birmingham have been working urgently on this issue and have been clear that they will take responsibility for tackling the problems facing their city, but they can only make that progress if the Secretary of State treats them as partners, and not as a political football.

I welcome the comments the Secretary of State has laid out today in regard to the action and support he will give Birmingham, but can he assure us that the commissioners will work with the city’s elected representatives and leadership to tackle these problems together? Is his Department considering a similar approach to other struggling councils? Will his officials be taking a deep dive into the areas he mentioned in his statement?

In Birmingham’s case, the Secretary of State mentioned the large equal pay settlement as the straw that broke the camel’s back, but he also told us that governance and service delivery concerns were raised by three independent sources: the local government and social ombudsman, the housing ombudsman and the Department for Education’s commissioner for special educational needs and disability. That came after Lord Kerslake’s review, which found that successive administrations had failed the city. Yet he provided no support until the section 114 notice. Why does it take that for the Government to take action on this scale?

Like the rest of the country, Birmingham is facing the shock of spiralling inflation and battling a cost of living crisis, but in the face of all of this, the Government stripped away its reserves. Can the Secretary of State confirm that that amounts to £1 billion taken from the pockets of local communities over the last decade? He surely cannot deny that Birmingham has experienced some of the most severe cuts of the last 13 years, and he must recall that it was this Prime Minister who boasted of changing the funding formulas to take money away from deprived urban areas. Now, faced with an eye-watering equal pay claim, with which the leadership are rightly dealing, Birmingham has been pushed over the edge.

As the Secretary of State admitted, this is by no means a single case. Local authorities across the country are struggling, and, after 13 years, he cannot seriously say that it is all their own fault. Perhaps he can confirm that only one council issued a section 114 notice before his party took office in 2010, and that since then eight councils have issued notices, with warnings that another 26 are at risk of bankruptcy over the next two years. Can he tell us why so many local authorities of all political stripes have already issued section 114 notices on his watch? This is not a one-off, so what work is his Department doing to support local authorities that are warning of financial distress now?

The truth is this crisis in local government has been caused by the Conservatives’ wrecking ball. With every swing, another local council is pushed to the brink and another local community falls over the edge. That is the difference between us. A Labour Government would oversee sustainable, long-term funding for councils, and we would work with local authorities and push power, wealth and opportunity out of Westminster. The Secretary of State finished his statement by talking about upholding the good name of local government. Surely we can all agree that central Government have real questions to answer. Will the Secretary of State finally grasp the nettle and take responsibility, or is his message to local councils today that this is just the start of more misery to come?

[Michael Gove]

It is a great pleasure to be reunited with the right hon. Lady; those 800 days apart seemed much longer. We have certain things in common—both of us have been trade union organisers in the past—but she has been much more successful in internal party elections than I have ever been, so I do have a lot to learn from her. Nevertheless, I must politely remind her that while in my statement I was, I hope, careful and scrupulous in making clear that responsibility goes back quite some time in Birmingham, and responsibility does need to be shared between elected members and officials, I did not mention anything specifically or explicitly party political, because I believe it is vital that we work together across parties and across political traditions to deal with this issue.

Given that the right hon. Lady did mention the party politics of this, I think it important for us to recognise that the intervention in Birmingham, and our interventions in Sandwell and Liverpool, have all been interventions in Labour-led local authorities in which comprehensive mismanagement extended back over years. It is simply not good enough to say that Birmingham has not received the support that it needed. Birmingham has a core spending power of £1,202.4 million. That is a 10.6% increase in the last year, and a 31.8% increase since 2015-16.

Labour local authorities have been supported with funding, and also supported with the help of West Midlands Combined Authority. There is a striking factor in the west midlands: why is it that Labour Sandwell and Birmingham are failing, while the Conservative leadership of Andy Street has seen the delivery of record investment and record house building? If people want to draw political lessons from what we have seen in Birmingham, the message is very clear: if you want effective and efficient local government, trust in Conservative leadership, particularly at a time when we need to recognise that a fundamental problem afflicting Birmingham’s finances is an equal-pay problem exacerbated by the actions of trade unions—trade unions which, in many cases, are funding Front-Bench spokesmen for the Labour party. It is vital that Labour politicians use their influence to ensure that we can work together to deal with the problems that that great city faces.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Angela Rayner and Michael Gove

Thursday 8th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend chairs the Committee brilliantly, but there are rules—the Osmotherly rules. They stress that serving civil servants act only in accordance with the wishes of Ministers and therefore it is rarely appropriate for them to appear to be questioned in the way that my hon. Friend would like. So I am ready, willing and able to appear in front of the Committee, but it is my view that it would be inappropriate for a serving civil servant to appear in the way that my hon. Friend requests.

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

Football is indeed coming home, but I also think that the chickens are coming home to roost for this Government. The Government’s spokesperson said last week that

“there was no high priority lane for testing suppliers…and there was no separate ‘fast track process’”.

Can the Minister for the Cabinet Office tell me what exactly the role was of the consultant to the testing procurement programme who described his role as

“to lead VIP stakeholder engagement with…Lord…Bethell”,

who is still somehow a Minister. If there is no fast track, why did the right hon. Gentleman’s own procurement director order officials to mark bids that came from Ministers’ email addresses as “fast track”?

[Michael Gove]

There were lots of interesting questions there. The first thing that I should say is that Lord Bethell is doing a fantastic job in the Department of Health and Social Care. I think that it is quite wrong for the right hon. Lady to cast aspersions on his dedicated public service and the work that he has done as Minister for Innovation.

The second thing that I should say is that every single procurement decision went through an eight-stage process in order to ensure that every single piece of personal protective equipment, or everything—[Interruption.] Useful commentary there from the Alan Hansen of politics, but the truth is that actually we have always been in compliance with the rules, unlike the Scottish Government. Audit Scotland has pointed out to the Scottish Government that they need to do better, and indeed they must.

[Angela Rayner]

I listened to the Minister’s answer, and I can tell him that Lord Bethell is no Sterling. The Prime Minister’s official spokesperson stated last week that no Ministers had used private emails to conduct Government business. Surely the Minister now accepts that that is untrue. Will he tell us when the Prime Minister will correct the record?

I listened to the Minister’s response to my hon. Friends the Members for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) and for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe). We have already submitted freedom of information requests to seek the publication of emails, but will the Minister agree now to publish every such email about Government contracts? Can he make a guarantee to the House today for bereaved families—including my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), who made a very passionate speech at Prime Minister’s questions yesterday—that every single one of those emails is secured for the public inquiry?

[Michael Gove]

The right hon. Lady quite rightly refers to the very powerful question from the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), and I think all of us deeply sympathise with the family loss that he has had to endure, as so many others have had to. It is precisely because we take these things seriously that we took steps to ensure that we could source personal protective equipment as quickly as possible. Of course, we did so in a way that was entirely consistent with good procurement practice. We used the measures that were used by the Labour Government in Wales and by the SNP Government in Scotland to ensure that we could get things to the frontline as effectively as possible and in accordance with fair procedure.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Angela Rayner and Michael Gove

Thursday 27th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am a great fan of Wagner, but I also recognise that the young tenor voice of my hon. Friend as Chairman of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee is one that deserves to be heard in the debate about how the inquiry should go forward. How exactly that voice is heard and amplified, and as part of which chorus, will be a matter for the whole House, I think.

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

I welcome the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to our first exchange at the Dispatch Box, but I only wish that it were in better circumstances. The testimony that we heard yesterday has left families across the country wondering what happened to their loved ones and how they died. It has left all of us fearing that the Government have not learned the lessons or taken the action needed to prevent more avoidable loss.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster once said that he had

“reluctantly but firmly”

concluded that the Prime Minister was

“not capable of…leading the party and the country in the way that I would have hoped.”

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster knows Dominic Cummings very well as his former chief of staff—better than anyone else in this House. Does he believe him to be a credible and truthful witness?

[Michael Gove]

First, may I welcome the right hon. Lady to her place? She is someone who started her working life on the frontline of social care, who has been a highly effective trade union representative and who has spoken passionately and movingly in this House about the need for greater social mobility and educational reform, and it will be a pleasure, I hope, to work with her over the weeks and months ahead.

As far as yesterday’s testimony went, people will make their own judgment on everything that was said then. I would say only two things. It has been a privilege to work closely with both the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Health over the course of the last 12 months. They have given unstinting service. It is thanks to their leadership, for example, that we have a world-beating vaccination programme, and it is a privilege to serve alongside them. I think the Prime Minister is doing a fantastic job, and I also think the Secretary of State for Health has shown unstinting—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Can I just say that topical questions should be short and punchy? They are not for making statements. Of course we all welcome the right hon. Lady to the Front Bench, but we really need to get answers to the questions that have been posed.

Ministerial Code

Debate between Angela Rayner and Michael Gove

Monday 2nd March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

No, please don’t.

[Michael Gove]

A candidate for the deputy leadership of the Labour party, the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), invites me to go further than I would want to at this moment, but I shall not.

[Angela Rayner]

indicated dissent.

[Michael Gove]

On a more serious note, the vital thing that we all recognise is that all Governments face entirely understandable and legitimate media scrutiny, but the real test of any Government is not what may preoccupy commentary at any given moment, but the delivery of the people’s priorities, the keeping of manifesto pledges and making life better for the people of this country, and that is our relentless focus.