Asked by: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, if the Government will publish a list of meetings he held with Dominic Cummings in (a) 2022 and (b) 2023.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
Since May 2010, the Government has published on gov.uk details of official government meetings with external organisations.
In 2011, this was extended to include details of meetings with senior media executives, covering official government, social and political meetings.
But otherwise, the Government does not record political meetings.
I would observe that since 2016, the Labour Party has stopped publishing its own meeting data on shadow frontbench meetings with senior media executives, breaking a commitment made by the then Labour Party leader (the Rt Hon Member for Doncaster North) during the Leveson Inquiry. The Hon. Member may recall how previous data illustrated his engagement with Evgeny Lebedev (now Lord Lebedev). As a shadow DCMS spokesman, the Hon. Member may wish to raise this subsequent shyness with his Opposition colleagues.
Asked by: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, whether any (a) parliamentary private secretary and (b) hon. Members have travelled on overseas visits organised by Government Departments since December 2019.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
As set out in the Ministerial Code, official overseas travel by a Parliamentary Private Secretary would be exceptional. There have been no approvals by 10 Downing Street for such Parliamentary Private Secretary travel under this Administration.
Official overseas travel is permitted for trade envoys in line with their responsibilities. In that respect, I refer the hon. Member to the answer to him of 29 June 2023, PQ 190260.
This answer also serves as a reply to the hon. Member to his recent question to the Prime Minister at the Liaison Committee.
Asked by: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Prime Minister, when he plans to respond to the letter from the hon. Member for Rhondda dated 18 April 2023.
Answered by Rishi Sunak - Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, and Minister for the Union
I refer the hon. Member to the letter from the Immigration Minister (my right hon. Friend, the Member for Newark) of 25 April, which serves as a substantive reply to the points the hon. Member raised in his letters of 18 April.
Regretfully, due to an administrative error, the reply was not clearer that the letter was being sent in response to both his letters.
A copy of that reply is in the Library (Deposited paper DEP2023-0421).