Tributes to Her Late Majesty The Queen

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Friday 9th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

“Ring out the old, ring in the new,”

wrote Tennyson on the death of his much-loved friend. We proclaim, “The Queen is dead, long live the King”, but it feels too sudden, too soon, too sharp a turn in our lives. The death of a queen is painful—it hurts. We do not have to ask,

“O death, where is thy sting?”

because we know—the nation feels the sting of death. It is as if a member of our own family has departed. Weirdly, we feel as if we ought to tell members of our family who have long departed the news. Even Google, with its brightly coloured logo, is grey today, which is sort of ironic for Her Majesty, who wore every colour under the sun at some point in her life.

The poet, priest and Member of Parliament, John Donne, said when preaching at Whitehall in 1627 that the protection against a fearful death was a life devoted to a calling. That is exactly what it was—a life devoted to a calling. How often must the Queen have thought, “Not another opening. Not another royal variety performance. Not another unfunny comedian. Not another Prime Minister.” Yet she did her duty. In the words of the promise of the boy scouts and the guides,

“to do my best to do my duty to God and to the Queen”.

She did her duty to herself.

I pledged my allegiance to the Queen 10 times as a clergyman and as Member of Parliament—we all have—and to her heirs and successors. In a sense, that is not personal at all. Our allegiance was to her as Head of State—the embodiment of our shared life as the United Kingdom—but I suspect that we felt that we all owed allegiance to her personally, because she had earned her moral authority. She donned a uniform to do her bit to fight fascism. She could not lead us into battle, or give us laws, or administer justice, but she gave us her heart and her devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations, as she faithfully promised in 1957.

There are other queens. I have met a few—but then again, too few to mention. However, we—and, I note, the President of France—call only one the Queen

The Queen’s face was on the coins my constituents started producing at the Royal Mint in Llantrisant in 1953. However, to mix my poets, she knew that

“Our little systems have their day”—

we are

“Dress’d in a little brief authority”.

I know that some people deify the monarchy, but that is to miss the point: the point is the humanity of the monarchy. Richard II, under whose great hammerbeam ceiling Her Majesty will lie in state in a few days’ time, is given a great speech by Shakespeare, which ends:

“You have mistook me all this while.

I live with bread like you, feel want

Taste grief, need friends”—

not just bread, of course, but marmalade sandwiches as well.

Most movingly of all, the Queen was as human as any other widow in losing her husband, her consort, her life companion. None will forget her sitting alone at Philip’s funeral. It is a sign of their enduring love that her and Philip’s deaths came closer in time than those of any other reigning monarch and their consort in our history. I thank God that it was in her reign that men were able to declare their love to one another, and women were able to do the same.

I end with words that have never felt more appropriate than for our longest-reigning monarch, who lived through holocaust and war, and led us through years of unimaginable turbulence:

“The weight of this sad time we must obey;

Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.

The oldest hath borne most: we that are young

Shall never see so much, nor live so long.”

God save the King.

UK Energy Costs

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

What was the Conservative party’s position on nuclear when David Cameron was asked the question in 2006? He did not have a position on it. I think the right hon. Gentleman is wrong about the £170 billion. If there is any doubt, I invite the Treasury to disclose the documents so that we can all evaluate them.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Is not the bigger point that there is a simple choice about how to pay for this? It either all goes on borrowing, ordinary families and the never-never, or at least some of it is paid for by a windfall tax on unearned and unexpected income which Putin has put into the pockets of Shell and BP. That is the fundamental choice.

[Keir Starmer]

That is the fundamental choice and the fundamental divide in the House. Let the Conservatives defend their position of protecting those excess profits, and we will defend our position of standing up for working people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

I am going to make some progress. I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has indicated that she will take action in relation to that particular matter, but getting full benefit from that does mean upgrading the UK’s power grid infrastructure. Alongside that, we need to improve the energy efficiency of homes, which would not only reduce demand for energy, saving people money, but is an element that would help to save the planet. We need to consider rolling out a significant home insulation programme.

[Chris Bryant]

rose—

[Mrs May]

I will give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), and then to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant).

[Mrs May]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I welcome every opportunity to increase the diversity of our supply of energy, and looking at these new opportunities is absolutely a way to do that.

[Chris Bryant]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way. I completely support the tidal lagoon in Swansea and hope that is now a real possibility for us—I hope the Prime Minister would accept that—and I agree with the right hon. Lady about insulation. I think I understood the Prime Minister to say earlier that there would be protection for public services for just six months. Many local authorities, hospitals and schools are facing dramatically increased bills already. Are they not going to need more support than just six months?

[Mrs May]

I think the public sector will be very pleased to hear that the Government have taken their concerns on board and are providing support for them.

There is another step that the Government need to take: they should look at building regulations. We are still building homes with gas boilers. Does it not make sense to change the regulations? Those gas homes will have to be retrofitted in just a few years’ time, so surely it is more cost-effective to take action now.

Seven Principles of Public Life

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2022 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I am grateful to be called to speak in this debate, Mr Twigg. As you know, I am Chair of the Committee on Standards. I have always thought that was a bit of an irony—I am certainly no saint, and I have never pretended to be. I was awarded the civility in public life award recently, and when I came back to the House that evening, some Conservative Members, including the then Justice Secretary, the right hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab), said to me, “That is completely and utterly ironic. You are the most acerbic Member we have.” I said, “You’re mistaken—it is not the servility in public life award that I got.”

I want to talk about three things today: first, the independent adviser on the ministerial code; secondly, openness, which is just one of the seven principles of public life; and thirdly, the new code of conduct recommended by the Committee on Standards, which I chair.

I have always thought that the independent adviser on the ministerial code should be a statutory post. I think, as Lord Geidt himself suggested, that the independent adviser should be able to launch an investigation into any potential breach of the ministerial code without reference to the Prime Minister, and that should include, potentially, launching an investigation into a breach of the code of conduct by the Prime Minister. I note that most constitutions around the world, including South Africa’s, have a process for investigating the Prime Minister. We have sometimes helped to draft those constitutions, although not South Africa’s—that was done by the African National Congress. However, we have absolutely no process whatever, unless the House manages to launch something, which can be started only if the governing party supports it.

I think it is important that we have a fully independent adviser on the ministerial code, but I note that the now Prime Minister said during the leadership contest that she was not going to appoint another one, because she did not need one to know

“the difference between right and wrong”.

Let us leave whether she knows the difference between right and wrong to one side for a moment; she will need an independent adviser, and will legally have to have one, unless she is going to completely rewrite the ministerial code itself, because it says that potential breaches of the code will be addressed by the independent adviser on the ministerial code. Unless she is going to tear up the ministerial code and have no ministerial code at all, she is going to have to have an adviser—not least because the adviser not only does that bit, but also draws up the list of ministerial financial interests. That is the only thing that prevents corruption in ministerial office in the United Kingdom—the only thing.

Bizarrely, that list is published only occasionally. It is meant to be published every six months but, quite often in recent years, because we have not had a ministerial adviser, it has not been published for a year, 18 months or two years. That means that normally—not just occasionally—the list of ministerial interests is not even a correct list of Ministers. It is not a correct list of Ministers today, and it was not a correct list last week, the week before or for much of this year, last year or the year before. That is not transparency, so I think we need radical reform to improve the system. The list of ministerial interests should be published the moment a Minister has made a declaration to their permanent secretary; that should be in real time. It should be co-ordinated with what we publish in the House, so that any member of the public, at any time, can see in a single place all the financial and other interests that any Member of the House has.

That takes me to my second point, which is about openness in Government. As all Members will know, we are required, as Members of Parliament, to register any financial interests we have under a variety of different headings: ownership of land, payments we have received for work we have done, gifts we have received, hospitality, overseas trips and so on. There are various thresholds—£300 or £1,500, depending on whether it is an Electoral Commission-relevant gift. We have do that within 28 days.

Breaching that requirement is a breach of the code of conduct. I know that—I said I am no saint—because I managed to get this completely wrong. I completely forgot to register that I had gone to Poland with the British Council. I remembered to do so three years later, and I completely owned up without anyone ringing the Daily Mail. We have a proper rectification process when individual Members just get it wrong in an honest way. Roughly 25 Members end up going through that process every year, and that is perfectly sensible.

However, we have a clause in the code of conduct that says that some must register these things unless they have received them in their ministerial capacity. The former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), and the former Foreign Secretary, now the Prime Minister, went to the premiere of the most recent James Bond film. They did not register that in the House, which they would have to have done within 28 days, and they said that that was because they went in a ministerial capacity. In the Standards Committee earlier this year, I asked a couple of other Ministers, who have now moved on, why someone would register going to a Bond premiere in their ministerial capacity. One of them said, “Well, that’s because James Bond exercises Executive functions.” Then one of them tried, “Well, actually James Bond works for MI5,” and I said, “It’s actually MI6, but don’t let that bother you.”

This is a nonsense, and it is a bigger nonsense than we think. The Government are theoretically committed to publish details of four different things every three months: travel, gifts, hospitality and meetings. There is not one Government publication, and each Department does that separately, but they are nearly always late. The worst offender is normally the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and the Cabinet Office is often the best performer. At the moment, if we add up all the days that Departments are late publishing this material, it is to the tune of 1,200 days. That means that if somebody went to an event last November, we would probably not know about it until next March or June, which could be after a general election or long after the moment when it would have helped the public to know what financial interests potentially influenced a Minister.

To check all these documents every year, we would have to look up 362 separate documents on the internet. On top of that, according to the last set of details provided by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which came out in July and referred to October to December last year, two Foreign Office Ministers apparently never went on any overseas visits whatever. I simply do not believe that. Apparently, the then Foreign Secretary, now the Prime Minister, had only one meeting in the whole three months. I simply do not believe that, bearing in mind that the Business Secretary at the time had 154 meetings in the same period.

So I do not think that the transparency system is working. It is bunch of made-up material, it is completely incomprehensible to the ordinary member of the public and it is a complete failure of the Nolan principle of openness. That is why the Standards Committee has said that we should abolish the exemption allowing Ministers simply to record things through the ministerial route. We think that all Members of Parliament should be treated equally under the rules of the House. If someone has a financial interest it should be known within 28 days, with the same details provided by all Members of Parliament, and no exemptions for Ministers. It could be argued that it is even more important to know who is wining and dining Ministers, because they are the people making executive decisions. We should know that in real time.

Finally, the Standards Committee, which I chair, has produced a new code of conduct for the House. There are many areas where we just want to make the rules simpler, so that people do not make inadvertent errors. Of course, we should have high standards, but we do not want to have impossible standards that nobody would be expected to meet in any other line of work. We have tried to simplify the rules in many different ways. I urge Members to read our full report. We have some outstanding differences with the Government, but those should be resolved on the Floor of the House.

We have also said that we should restrict second jobs for Members. For instance, someone with a second job should have a contract that says what that person can and cannot do, so that they cannot engage in paid lobbying, as Owen Paterson did. We also said that a Member should not have a job where they sell their knowledge as an MP on the open market to businesses around the country, effectively as a political consultant. That is not on. The Government seem reluctant to bring that forward to the House. I gather there will be a debate next Wednesday, and I hope that we can resolve all of this swiftly and bring in rules for all Members of the House that are more stringent in some areas and simpler in others, so that all Members are treated equally.

It would be a massive mistake for the new Administration to start off with a row about standards. That is what brought down the previous Administration. I really hope the new Prime Minister will not go down that route again, and I know that many Conservative Members feel similarly. I hear that the Government intend to bring forward only the new provisions on introducing a right of appeal over standards issues. I think that would be a big mistake.

Finally—you will tell me that I have already said “finally”, Mr Twigg, but I used to do it in my sermons, and I do not see why I should stop now—when the motion to appoint the new Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Mr Daniel Greenberg, is brought forward, I am confident that the House will be enthusiastically supportive. Those who know him through several Committees he already works with in the House will know that he is absolutely cracking. He is clear, incisive, witty, intelligent and clever. He knows the law inside out and how Parliament and politics work. He will be a magnificent Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. I hope the Government will bring forward that measure very soon.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate after so many brilliant contributions from my Labour colleagues. I hope the wide-angled camera that the parliamentary authorities use to broadcast this meeting will show that not a single Conservative Back-Bench MP has bothered to turn up. That is a shame. The Minister and her Parliamentary Private Secretary are rightly in their places, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. Standards in public life should not be optional. Every one of us, regardless of party, should seek to uphold, celebrate and share them, and we should tell the story of why they matter, but someone needs to turn up to do that. I hope that people can see the empty chairs in this room and that they will ask why only Labour Back-Bench MPs were speaking in this debate. This issue does matter.

The standards spoken about so brilliantly by my hon. Friends, the Members for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker), for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) and for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) are important. We could restrict those standards to selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. We could include others, as many people who have applied the principles of public life to their own organisations have done, such as duty and a requirement to uphold the law—that should be a given but, sadly, we have seen that that is not always so. Other principles are respect, equality and the importance of treating everyone equally, no matter who they are, who they fall in love with, where they come from, the colour of their skin or their religion. The principles, when taken together, are about how to be decent.

I sometimes get things wrong; I sometimes make mistakes. The system should be broad and confident enough to allow us—if we make an honest mistake, because of innovation or because we get something wrong—to put our hands up, apologise and learn that lesson. That is an informed, sensible and confident system. What we have at the moment is a broken system. It is important that we deal with it. It is not broken because of neglect. It is broken because of deliberate decisions to break it. That is dangerous, because it puts us on a path to a place where standards do not matter and are not upheld. It suggests that we are all the same, and that every Member of Parliament—regardless of their party—is somehow in the mud, somehow on the take and somehow unfairly representing their constituents. There are brilliant MPs in every party; there are a lot of good, decent Conservative MPs who would probably want to be here. We need to make sure that this debate is conducted against those high principles and in a language that reflects the political body we are seeking to create. That is the spirit of what I want to say.

The context in which this debate is being held is important, and my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree set it out really well. We are here because the last Administration sought to break many of those standards, sought to evade scrutiny and sought to excuse and protect those who had broken the standards, the system and the principles that we seek to uphold. That gives us a choice, because people care about those standards.

If we were to do a taste test on the streets of Plymouth or in any other constituency and to ask people to name the seven principles of public life, I am not certain that every member of the public would be able to name them all, but they would all give it a good go, and the words we would get back would reflect the overall sentiment of the principles. That is what we should be aiming at, because what we have seen over the past year should scare each and every one of us—no matter whether we are in government or in opposition, aspiring to be in government. This issue matters.

Yesterday, I hosted a group of young care leavers from Plymouth at an event with Barnardo’s. They talked about their experience of being in care, and I am enormously proud of them for the way they travelled from Plymouth—many of them leaving it for the first time—to come to Parliament. One of them asked me, “Why would anyone take notice of us? Why does it matter?” I explained the job of Members of Parliament, and they said, “Aren’t they all corrupt?” That is not an unreasonable question for a young person who has been confronted by years and years of the news coverage that we have had. I am so proud of those young people for telling their story about being in care, but we need to make sure that our day-to-day business here speaks to a place that every young person can look at and aspire to be in and whose principles they can aspire to follow.

That means changing the rules that we have. I do not see a reason why MPs have second jobs. The declarations of who has a second job includes many of the MPs in the south-west near to me. When I at how many hours or days a week they spend doing a second job, I think that is one or two days a week that they are not doing the job that they were elected to do and that they are paid very handsomely to do. What are we getting? Are taxpayers getting a rebate? Are they getting a refund? What influence, decisions and information is being shared? There should be no second jobs, except for those who are keeping up a medical licence or the ability to write a book.

I understand why some people do not want to be in Parliament, because I do not think it is a safe place to work. I say that because I worked in professional workplaces until my election, and I did not doubt that any of those private sector workplaces were safe. People were able to come to work and be safe. I do not always believe that Parliament is a safe place to work, especially for many of our staff. Young people, often not paid very much, are in an atmosphere full of alcohol, where power has a currency all by itself. When we talk about standards in public life, they are not amorphous, blobby things. They are not foggy things that we are trying to catch. They are lived experience for people. We must make this place a safe place for everybody to work. There is a big distinction between the Parliament that I turned up to as a young researcher in 2000 with brown hair and the Parliament that I turned up to with grey hair when I got elected.

[Chris Bryant]

It was grey back then—there is nothing wrong with grey.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mrs Heather Wheeler)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I am grateful for the opportunity to debate this important and timely topic. I particularly thank the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) for requesting the debate and express my gratitude to the hon. and right hon. Members present for their active participation.

The standards to which public servants in the United Kingdom, including those who serve in political life, are appropriately held are highly regarded across the world. The bedrock of those standards is formed, as we have heard many hon. Members say, by the seven principles of public life established by Lord Nolan in 1995. The principles— selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership—are woven into the codes of conduct for Members of the House and those in the other place. They are also central to the ministerial code, which sets the standards of behaviour expected of those who serve in Her Majesty’s Government. The seven principles, as we have heard, apply much more widely, such as to civil servants, those in local government and across public life.

Today’s contributions have made clear the importance of the seven principles to all of us. They form a touchstone to which we return and a benchmark against which we judge our actions. When we make those judgments, there will, of course, be times when we fall short. We cannot be complacent about that. Applying and upholding the principles is not a passive undertaking. It requires collective vigilance, self-assessment and willingness to learn and be held to account. That can be uncomfortable, but it is essential.

I shall try to answer as many of the points and questions raised in the debate as I can. The Government have been considering the “Standards Matter 2” report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life alongside Nigel Boardman’s report on the use of supply chain finance in Government. As set out in the written statement on 15 July 2022, a number of changes have been made in response to those reports. For example, in June 2022, new guidance was issued on the declaration and management of outside interests in the civil service. The Government have also implemented Nigel Boardman’s recommendations on Government contracts and the use of supply chain finance in Government. In May 2022, reforms were made to the role and remit of the Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests in response to recommendations by the Committee on Standards in Public Life.

The Government are also taking action to improve the enforcement of the business appointment rules. Mechanisms are now in place for breaches of the rules to be taken into account in the award of honours. Agreement on a similar approach is also being sought with the independent House of Lords Appointment Commission. The Government are now considering how to implement the same approach in relation to public appointments. Alongside this, the Government are considering consequences for prospective employers, including through the procurement process. Work on further reforms continues and will be informed by the new Prime Minister.

Please be in no doubt that the Government remain fully committed to ensuring that all Ministers, including the Prime Minister, are held to account for maintaining high standards of behaviour and behaving in a way that upholds the highest standards of propriety, as the public rightly expect. The ministerial code lays that out. In the absence of an independent adviser, permanent secretaries carry out the process of reviewing Ministers’ interests, advised by the Cabinet Office. Correcting the points from the right hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson), it is actually the duty of the permanent secretary to carry out that work in the absence of the independent adviser.

The Prime Minister is currently dealing with a number of pressing issues, as Members might imagine, and has not been in post long enough to turn her attention to this matter yet. However, it is important and she will do so as quickly as she is able. We have heard many Members quoting the Prime Minister, from the hustings and so on, as saying that she is not appointing an independent adviser.

[Chris Bryant]

One of the difficulties of it all being done by the permanent secretary is that if—let us say, for the sake of argument—a Secretary of State was accused by a permanent secretary of bullying them, how then could the Government Minister simply turn to the permanent secretary for advice on adherence or otherwise to the ministerial code? That is why we need an independent adviser on the ministerial code. It cannot simply be reporting to permanent secretaries. Under the system the Minister has just outlined, there is no means for any of this becoming public. Permanent secretaries cannot publish it. The only person who can publish it is the independent adviser on the ministerial code.

[Mrs Wheeler]

The head of the civil service can take the role of looking after issues like that when there is a clash between a senior Government Minister and their permanent secretary. The Prime Minister said that she was “not necessarily saying” that she would not appoint an independent adviser, but that

“the leadership needs to take responsibility. You cannot outsource ethics to an adviser. We need ethics running through the Government. The culture of organisations starts at the top and that’s what’s important to me.”

In response to the right hon. Member for Rhondda, again, the appointment of the next independent adviser and the terms of their appointment are matters for the new Prime Minister. In the light of the resignation of the former independent adviser and the comments made by Lord Geidt and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee at the time, the Government felt it was right to reflect and consider the way in which that independent adviser’s role was delivered, particularly given the increased scrutiny of the role. The independent adviser is a personal adviser to the Prime Minister, and it is an appointment on a five-year term. It is therefore right that the appointment is made by the new Prime Minister, and that some time is allowed for the Prime Minister to consider next steps in this key role. It is for the Prime Minister to confirm how this function will be undertaken and to consider the available options.

[Chris Bryant]

Will the Minister allow me to intervene again?

[Mrs Wheeler]

Very briefly.

[Chris Bryant]

I am not right honourable, by the way—[Interruption.] It is an outrage, I know—the country can hardly continue.

This is an important point; when will we see the first list of ministerial financial interests published for this new Government?

[Mrs Wheeler]

I am afraid the hon. Gentleman will have to wait and see. The handling of interests in the interim—the process of managing interests—continues in line with the ministerial code. The code sets out that the permanent secretary in each Department can provide advice to Ministers, and plays a role in scrutinising interests. The Cabinet Office also provides that advice, and the Government’s publication of transparency information also continues unaffected. Interestingly, the hon. Gentleman mentioned 362 pieces of transparency; in fact, there have been 4,568 transparency releases on the gov.uk platform since the pandemic was declared—more than 10 times the number the hon. Gentleman mentioned.

[Chris Bryant]

I was referring to the ministerial transparency documents. In order to find out what financial interests Ministers have, we have to look at more than 300 documents; it should be one document, so that everybody can look at it easily.

Extreme Heat Preparedness

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

I hope that the hon. Lady is not attempting to create confusion. We have been very clear about the simple message that everyone should take sensible measures to guard their own health. They should stay in the shade, drink lots of water, wear a hat and not exercise unduly, but we are focused on the groups we know are particularly vulnerable, following what happened in France back in 2003. We think there needs to be a very sharp focus on them, and our message is clear. There are steps we can take individually and collectively to protect ourselves, and that is what we are promoting.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Exposure to the sun can lead to skin cancer, and skin cancer, especially melanoma, can kill. The incidence of it in the UK has grown significantly in the last 15 to 20 years. Can the Minister make sure of two things? First, can we get rid of VAT on good-quality sunscreen so that it is cheaper and available to more people? Secondly, can we make sure that anybody who works in our emergency services, including all the police and the police officers working here outside the building, have free sunscreen?

[Kit Malthouse]

At last, a constructive question. The hon. Gentleman raises two important points, and I will certainly take them away and reassure myself that they are both being addressed.

Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

No, I don’t have confidence in this Government, because they have manifestly failed to govern efficiently or effectively. They wasted billions on fraudulent covid loans, unusable PPE and a test and trace system that never, ever worked, and they have completely mismanaged the Passport Office, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and the railways.

No, I don’t have confidence in this Government, because they lied about Brexit and they have not got Brexit done.

No, I don’t have confidence in this Government, because they have not got any of the big calls right. When we were warning—when I was warning—about Putin’s Russia, the Prime Minister said the days of tanks rolling across Europe were over, and he cut our Army by 10,000. When covid started, the Government failed to protect people in care homes, sending thousands unnecessarily to early graves. When everyone issued warnings about inflation, the Prime Minister said that it was nothing to get worried about.

No, I don’t have confidence in this Government, because a massive shortage of personnel and skills is holding Britain back. Asparagus and courgettes are ploughed back into the field, strawberries are left to rot and pig carcases are destroyed, all while British families rely on food banks and—worst and most shameful of all—NHS hospitals run food banks for their staff. Many schools have no applications at all for teaching posts, especially in key subjects such as science, maths and modern languages.

No, I don’t have confidence in this Government, because they refused to put Magnitsky sanctions in place for years; because they still have not tackled dodgy Russian money and London’s massive money laundering industry; because they failed to take Putin’s initial invasion of Ukraine seriously enough in 2014; and because their delight in Putin’s bling emboldened Putin.

No, I don’t have confidence in this Government, because they are obsessed with all the wrong things. They spend more time and energy protecting statues than protecting women from domestic abuse. They deliberately drive wedges between people over gender identity and trans rights, and ignore the fact that their own Equalities Minister resigned because he thought the Government were creating a hostile environment for LGBT people, which is why the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson) should be ashamed to defend this Government.

No, I don’t have confidence in this Government, because they have no plan for the NHS or social care. England has a backlog of 6.6 million patients, and that excludes patients’ multiple treatments. And no, it is not all to do with covid; we had a 4.8 million backlog before the pandemic.

[Chris Clarkson]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

First of all, that is not a point of order. Secondly, Mr Speaker, the Chairman of Ways and Means and I have all said that we should try to conduct this debate in reasonable terms. I think we all need to calm down and discuss the important matters before the House. I call Chris Bryant.

[Chris Bryant]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

No, I don’t have confidence in this Government, because they play fast and loose with numbers. They boast that they are recruiting 20,000 more police, but they cut police numbers by 20,000. They boast of a single tax cut now but forget that they have increased taxes 15 times in two and a half years, giving us the highest tax burden for 70 years. They boast of the covid vaccination as if they personally developed it in the Downing Street kitchen, but France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Singapore have higher vaccination rates than us, and Wales managed it faster than England.

No, I don’t have confidence in this Government, because not even Conservative MPs really have confidence in this Government. They know that this Government are a massive conceit, an organised hypocrisy, a house built on sand—and the fissures run deep. They are not even very good at being Conservatives these days, tearing up conventions and the constitution like student revolutionaries. Of course, that is not how Conservative MPs will vote today. Oh no—they would not dare risk a general election. But even as they troop through the Lobby to indicate that, yes, they do still have confidence in the Government, they will be privately plotting that Government’s demise. They will be making themselves look foolish today. I do not mind that, but they cannot take the British public for fools as well.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

We are monitoring all prices very closely, particularly for vital products such as formula. I know that the hon. Lady will welcome the support that is going to 8 million households on means-tested benefits, starting from today and with another instalment coming in the autumn, on top of the assistance that has already been given. We have now put something like £37 billion into the system to assist families, but we constantly keep these things under review and will act if needed.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Fresh fruit and vegetables are very important to everybody’s diet. We would like more people, especially people from poorer households, to be able to afford more. One of the problems is that we do not have enough people in the UK now to pick the British crop of fresh fruit and vegetables. How will we ensure that that happens?

Can we also ensure that fresh fruit and vegetables from overseas can get to supermarkets faster? I do not know what the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster’s experience is when he buys peppers, courgettes, onions or potatoes, but my experience these days is that they have all gone off by the time I get home.

[Mr Speaker]

Come to Chorley market; they are nice and fresh.

[Chris Bryant]

It’s a bit of a long way from the Rhondda.

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point about access to ambient and fresh food for all of us. I know that the Home Secretary is in constant discussion with colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the industry about the provision and balance of labour that we encourage to come to the country to help us with summer harvesting, for example. We also need to work hard to ensure that the bulk of our imported fresh food gets here quickly and can enter the supply chain extremely quickly. My right hon. and learned Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office and I will work closely over the summer to ensure that our short, straight supply lines are maintained as efficiently as possible.

I have a small domestic tip for the hon. Gentleman that I learned from a friend who works in the industry. It is extremely important that the chill chain is maintained. If he can get chilled food as quickly as possible into his fridge, it will last a lot longer than if he leaves it hanging around and then chills it again. That is particularly true of dairy products.

Functioning of Government

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

The business of government will continue functioning as the public would expect it to do. I reject the characterisation that the hon. Member makes, and I suspect that the vast majority of the general public in this country would also reject that characterisation.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister should be making the statement in this House, frankly, not anywhere else, so that we could question him about the functioning of government. I think, Mr Speaker, that you would prefer that as well. Let me just ask the Minister this. There are two major crises at the moment: one is the cost of living crisis, which is facing many millions of families; and the other is the situation in Ukraine and across NATO. There is a real possibility that a Government might have to deploy further troops in the next few months, for proper reasons. A caretaker Government cannot do that—it simply cannot: the rules forbid them from doing that. Yet I fear that this Prime Minister—the disgraced, deselected Prime Minister—will be more dangerous in these next three months, if he is allowed to have another three months, than he has been in the last three years. Can the Minister please make sure that we have a proper Government soon—in other words, before the summer recess?

[Michael Ellis]

We have a proper Government, and proper government continues. I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that he talks about the cost of living and Ukraine, but I have hardly heard him or his hon. Friends speak of those subjects over the past six months. They have mostly been talking about personalities. It is this Government who have been getting on with the business of representing the United Kingdom in international fora and have led the way on Ukraine and, when it comes to dealing with the global cost of living crisis, having been doing that too.

Standards in Public Life

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

My hon. Friend would be right if he were working under the assumption that those making the appointment knew that the individual in question had the wrong behaviours and the wrong attitudes. Submitting that it is a possibility, or that there are rumours, would not be sufficient; that is the crux of the difference.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I hope one day that the Minister plays these things back and listens to himself. I do not think he will be proud of himself in later days. I know that many decent Conservative MPs feel terribly ashamed of everything that has been happening in this sordid process. Is not this the real problem? If the boss is someone who has spent all his political career trying to get away with things, and finding himself innocent in the court of his own opinion; if he boasts to everybody, laughingly, that all the sex pests support him for the leadership; if, whenever he gets into trouble, he tries to destroy the system; then all his allies will endlessly take liberties. It does not then feel like a Government who are trying to serve the British people. It just feels like a Government who are trying to help themselves.

CHOGM, G7 and NATO Summits

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. I think the UK can be very proud of the way we have moved beyond hydrocarbons in so many areas, but we must recognise the limits and the pace of what we have achieved, and be less neuralgic about using our domestic hydrocarbons, particularly when the alternative is just to import them from abroad.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is 3,056 days since Putin started his illegal invasion of Ukraine, and we spent far too long turning a blind eye to what was going on there, so forgive me if I am a little impatient even about what we have already achieved. I want to see a British industrial strategy to ensure we are making enough lethal weaponry to give to the Ukrainians so they can win. I want to see a major diplomatic effort to ensure that Putin does not make further inroads in Republika Srpska and Bosnia. I also want to make sure that we as a country are still as focused on the laundering of dirty Russian money through the City of London as we should have been 10 years ago.

[The Prime Minister]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, the UK led the way in Europe in supplying weaponry to Ukraine, and the next generation light anti-tank weapons were of great importance. When it comes to sanctions, we have a new economic crime Bill coming in that will help us to clamp down further, but what we have done already is very considerable. The squeeze is being felt by Putin and his economy, and we will continue to apply it. The hon. Gentleman asks for a long-term strategy: what he got from the G7 and NATO was a commitment to stick to the course for as long as it takes, and that is what we are going to do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

The hon. Lady is right to raise that case, and there are many tragic and appalling cases that are similar to it. This is why the Government launched the inquiry, it is why they asked Sir Robert Francis to write his report, and it is why they are acting in a way in which previous Governments over the course of decades have not acted. We will process the matter just as soon as we reasonably, practicably can.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I wish you a very happy birthday, Mr Speaker—the happiest of birthdays.

Why are the Government so bloated? In the UK, we have more Government Ministers than France, Germany and Italy put together, and more than India, Canada and Australia put together. When I arrived in this House in 2001, the Prime Minister made do with one Parliamentary Private Secretary. This Prime Minister has four PPSs; Mrs Thatcher had only one. Why is this Prime Minister so much less efficient than either Tony Blair or Mrs Thatcher? Is it not time, if we are going to have a cull of civil servants, that we had a cull of Ministers? At least one quarter of the Front Bench should go. Would somebody like to name one?

[Steve Barclay]

I used to think that the hon. Gentleman liked to have the opportunity to question Ministers, and it is good for him to have such a range to choose from. The key issue is how we are delivering for the public. That is what we as a Government are focused on and that is what the transformation programme will deliver.