Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Sir Christopher Bryant.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you for the email you just sent to us all, which announces that the new Clerk of the House is going to be Tom Goldsmith. I am grateful to have the opportunity to be the first to congratulate him.

[Mr Speaker]

You missed the statement!

[Sir Chris Bryant]

Oh, I missed the statement—I am terribly sorry. I am useless; resign instantly. Anyway, I am congratulating him.

It is very important that rural communities look like rural communities. One of the things that we did in the 1945 Labour Government was to insist that people could not put advertising hoardings up along motorways outside towns. Unfortunately, lots of farmers these days are wheeling advertising hoardings along by motorways, which is dangerous for drivers on motorways. Is it not time that we put a stop to it?

[Trudy Harrison]

The hon. Gentleman raises a technical question. I am happy to liaise with my colleagues in the Department for Transport on that particular matter, and I will write to him with a response.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Attorney General]

As I have said, I am not able to share my assessment, but perhaps it might be useful for the House to know when a section 19(1)(b) statement has previously been used. It was used in relation to the Communications Act 2003 by Tessa Jowell, who used words very similar to mine just now:

“That does not mean that we believe the Bill to be incompatible…and we would mount a robust defence if it were legally challenged.”—[Official Report, 8 December 2002; Vol. 395, c. 789.]

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

And it wasn’t.

[The Attorney General]

It was challenged. It was challenged all the way up to the ECHR, and I understand that in the end the Government won by nine votes to eight.