Points of Order
Debate between Caroline Nokes and Julian Lewis
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance, in what I believe is truly a genuine point of order, as to how Parliament and the public should understand the terminology in “Erskine May” about inadvertently misleading the House. Yesterday, my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) pointed out:
“The Prime Minister has said various things about Peter Mandelson’s vetting process…that have now turned out not to be true.”
He asked:
“Does he accept that he inadvertently misled the House of Commons?”
The Prime Minister replied:
“No, I did not mislead the House of Commons.”—[Official Report, 20 April 2026; Vol. 784, c. 51.]
He then argued that other information that had been withheld from him had led to this situation.
My understanding is that giving the House wrong information, but in good faith, is precisely what is meant by inadvertently misleading the House. The Prime Minister does not seem to understand that, and nor does the Foreign Secretary, to whom I asked a similar question this morning. Is it me who is misunderstanding the meaning of the term “to inadvertently mislead the House”?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I thank the right hon. Member for his point of order, and for providing notice of it. Although Ministers are responsible for the accuracy of their remarks at the Dispatch Box, I am very clear as Chair that this is of the utmost importance and that Ministers must take their responsibilities to this House seriously. If the right hon. Member requires further advice on what may or may not constitute this House being inadvertently misled, I suggest that he follow up on the specific concerns with the Clerk of the Journals in the first instance.
Women’s State Pension Age: Financial Redress
Debate between Caroline Nokes and Julian Lewis(10 months ago)
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Sir Julian Lewis
Yes. In a way, the Government have fallen between two stools. The report, as we have heard, anticipated that the Government would be reluctant to the right the wrong done to so many people at once, but nevertheless the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman felt that justice required compensation to be paid. It knew that there would be this Government resistance, so it must have meant a lot to the ombudsman to still go down this highly unusual route of trying to present its report directly to Parliament, because it felt it would not get far by dealing with the Government directly.
One might have expected the Government to offer a scheme that fell some way short of the ombudsman’s recommendation, but their outright rejection of any restitution at all is rather insulting to the women whose complaint was upheld by the ombudsman. As we have heard, despite the DWP claiming to accept the findings, and even apologising for its maladministration, it is not offering a penny in restitution, and is relying in its response on a deeply unconvincing polling exercise that supposedly found that nine out of 10 of the affected women knew in advance that their state pension age was going to change. If that was the case, why did so many of them carry on as if nothing was going to change at all? A few moments ago, the hon. Member for Falkirk (Euan Stainbank) asked about the nature of the sampling that was done; only some 200 women born in the 1950s were included in the sample of nearly 2,000 people surveyed, which led to that misleading result.
I know the Minister has a great deal of expertise and a strong track record on issues of this sort from his former career, before he came to this House. I therefore appeal to him to at least reach out the hand of negotiation and discussion; to accept the offer that reasonable people are making to the Government; and to sit down and talk to them, and not to let the whole thing go through the courts, which would lead to an adversarial deepening of hostility and, inevitably, a less desirable outcome for everyone concerned.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
With an immediate four-minute time limit, I call Brian Leishman.
Artificial Intelligence Opportunities Action Plan
Debate between Caroline Nokes and Julian Lewis(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I revert to the article in The Times mentioned by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp), headlined: “Rachel Reeves using AI to reply to Treasury emails”.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. Even if the right hon. Gentleman is quoting from a newspaper, I would prefer it if he did not use the Chancellor’s name.
Sir Julian Lewis
I beg your pardon, Madam Deputy Speaker. I did not want to misquote the headline.
Nevertheless—as we now all know who she is—I discover that, instead of corresponding with her civil servants, as I thought, I am engaging with something called a “correspondence triage automation tool”, which is used for
“the automatic matching of correspondence with appropriate standard responses”.
That might give us cause to chuckle, but can we at least have an assurance that when we write to Ministers, even if they are not replying, they will at least be informed of the fact that concerns have been raised by Members of this House?
Peter Kyle
I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that Ministers are fully engaged in corresponding with Members across the House. Having been a Back Bencher for so long in opposition, I can assure you that I strive to be a lot better than what I experienced during so many of those years.
Public Spending: Inheritance
Debate between Caroline Nokes and Julian Lewis(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Congratulations on your election, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I cannot hope to match the splendid double entendre of the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy), but I may I say to the Chancellor that one effect of being here for a long time is a realisation that no one party has a monopoly on wisdom? Given the impartial assessment by the Library that covid cost this country between £310 billion and £410 billion, is she willing to at least concede that the previous Government did a pretty good job in getting inflation down to 2% less than two years after the pandemic?