Points of Order

Chris Leslie Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order, of the detailed content of which I had no advance knowledge. However, I make no complaint about that whatsoever.

I listened carefully to what the right hon. Gentleman said, and I would respond as follows. First, in my judgment, it is not principally for Mr Sedwill to be the judge of which Committee has competence—I use the term “competence” in the technical sense—in respect of this matter, or indeed to conclude that only one Committee is involved. That is a matter about which other people will have a view, not least parliamentarians. I would very politely suggest to the National Security Adviser that he should be sensitive to the views of senior colleagues.

Secondly, it is a matter of established fact—not least testified to by the exchanges at Defence questions this afternoon—that questions relating to the subject matter that the right hon. Gentleman describes are in order. If such questions were not in order, they would not have been accepted as oral questions by the Table Office, but they were in order, and therefore so were supplementaries appertaining to those tabled questions. That therefore gives the matters a relevance that the National Security Adviser, with the very greatest of respect, is in no position to deny. Thirdly, I would say it is a well-established principle that if a Select Committee requests that a witness gives evidence, in almost every case that potential witness accedes to that request.

Finally, I simply say to the right hon. Gentleman—I do not know whether it is relevant in this case—that I know of an instance in which a potential witness indicated that he did not believe he had much to say that would add to the deliberations of the Committee in question. However, he was advised that, whether or not he thought that what he had to say would greatly assist the deliberations of the Committee, the Committee nevertheless wished to see him. It might even have been the case that Committee members wanted to say things to him, almost irrespective of whether he wanted to say things to them.

All in all, I therefore think there is a compelling case on this matter. There are powers available to Committees to report a refusal to appear to the House, and thereafter the matter can be escalated. I very politely suggest that it would be highly undesirable for such a procedure to be needed in this case.

In the light of all those considerations, I hope the right hon. Gentleman’s efforts to secure the attendance of the National Security Adviser will now bear fruit. Moreover, I have known the right hon. Gentleman for 34 years as of last month, and while I am sure that the National Security Adviser is an extremely formidable fellow, I would say to him, through the right hon. Gentleman and through the medium of the House, “Give up the unequal struggle and just appear.”

[Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am saving up the hon. Gentleman.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Lady nods in acquiescence to my point and I will leave that matter there.

The hon. Lady is obviously dissatisfied and she has put her dissatisfaction on record—indeed, she has done so for a second time as, if I remember rightly, she had a go on Thursday at topical questions and received a similar answer. The hon. Lady is nothing if not consistent and persistent. I also say to her that what Ministers and others say in the House is a matter for them; it is not for me to act as the corrective to Ministers who might be thought to make a mistake, and nor am I a policeman in such matters. The hon. Lady’s dissatisfaction will have been noted by those on the Treasury Bench and I am sure she will find other parliamentary avenues to pursue this matter—there is nothing to stop her doing so over and over and over again, although I suspect that she will require no encouragement from me to do so.

[Mr Leslie]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You may have noticed that in the past half hour the Department for Exiting the European Union has finally given in following the resolution of this House of Commons that insisted that the 58 Brexit impact assessments—the Government call them “sectoral analyses”—should be published to the Brexit Committee. This is an overdue moment, but I seek your guidance, because these sectoral analyses cover many, many areas of interest to all Members of the House, whatever Committees they serve on. With no disrespect to members of the Brexit Committee, I wonder what you could do—perhaps make representations to the Chair of the Brexit Committee or to the Government, or to both—to ensure that all those sectoral analyses can be published and made available to all hon. Members. We are talking about aerospace, agriculture, the automotive sector, chemicals, construction, defence, the creative sector, financial services, pharmaceuticals, telecoms, tourism and manufacturing. These are issues that the whole country deserves to know about.

[Mr Speaker]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. As he says, publication to the Select Committee has taken place today. I had anticipated that it would, because obviously conversations about this matter took place between the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union and the Chair of the Brexit Committee, the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), and conversations took place that included me. I had expected that the analyses would be released no later than today and am pleased that that has happened.

I note what the hon. Gentleman says about the extent of the interest in the matters covered by the sectoral analyses. My response is to say to him that publication is to the Committee and the matter is in the hands of the Committee. It is perfectly open to the hon. Gentleman —and, indeed, to other Members similarly interested—to approach the Chair of the Select Committee and to seek disclosure. I must emphasise, however, that at this stage it is very much a matter for the Chair of the Committee, although an approach to him is in no way improper—indeed, not least on the back of this point of order, it is very much to be expected. The right hon. Member for Leeds Central is a very experienced Member of this House, as well as an unfailingly courteous one, and I rather doubt that he would be surprised to be so approached.