Caroline Lucas
Main Page: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)Department Debates - View all Caroline Lucas's debates with the Cabinet Office
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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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.
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Michael Ellis
I do not accept the hon. Lady’s characterisation. What she obviously does not wish to recognise is that, as days pass during a heated episode, investigation and media inquiries, pictures become more crystallised. As I said in my opening remarks, when fresh allegations arose, the Prime Minister did not immediately recall the matter that had been raised with him in late 2019. As soon as he was reminded, the No.10 press office corrected the public line. So it is not a matter of anything other than recollection and due process.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Just two months ago, the Prime Minister stood at the Dispatch Box at Prime Minister’s questions and told me:
“of course sexual harassment is grounds for dismissal.”—[Official Report, 27 April 2022; Vol. 712, c. 759.]
Yet in 2019 he kept the right hon. Member for Tamworth as Minister, and this year he gave him powers over MPs’ welfare as Deputy Chief Whip, despite knowing that a formal complaint had been upheld against him. Let us be very clear: Lord McDonald’s letter says in black and white:
“Mr Johnson was briefed in person about the…outcome of the investigation.”
This is not about rumour, innuendo or gossip. Does that not show that the mechanisms for upholding standards in public life are only as good as the independence and integrity of the person charged with enforcing them—and does that not show not just that we need radical systems reform, but that the Prime Minister himself just has to go?
Michael Ellis
What the hon. Lady wishes to do is to draw politics into this matter. I would respectfully suggest to her that her drive to remove the Prime Minister will fail. The reason is that she focuses on personalities rather than on politics and policies. If she wishes to change the Prime Minister, she needs to win a general election in order to do so. This mechanism is not suitable for the party politics that she wishes to play.