Lord Mandelson: Government Response to Humble Address Motion
Debate between Chris Ward and Graham Stuart(2 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Chris Ward
My hon. Friend makes the point incredibly powerfully. It is one that we have lost somewhat in the discussion about technicalities around the process, but it is the central point that we should be trying to address. As I say, the Prime Minister has committed to driving through change and ensuring that this Government reflect that. We are bringing forward the groundbreaking, long-overdue violence against women and girls strategy, but there needs to be much broader cultural change as well.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
The Prime Minister said that the Cabinet Secretary’s integrity should not be questioned and then immediately briefed out that he was going to be sacked, having given him the responsibility of overseeing the handing over of documents that could be detrimental to a Prime Minister so desperate to save his political life that he has already thrown his closest advisers—communications and chief of staff—under a bus. How can we know that there is no link between the very integrity the Prime Minister highlighted and the desire to remove the Cabinet Secretary from a role in which he might be at risk of removing this Prime Minister?
Chris Ward
As I said, I am not going to comment on the Cabinet Secretary—it is not appropriate for a Cabinet Office Minister to do so. I reassure the right hon. Gentleman that the process is under way in the Cabinet Office and that it is unaffected by other matters.
Lord Mandelson
Debate between Chris Ward and Graham Stuart(1 month ago)
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Graham Stuart
Before the appointment of Peter Mandelson as our ambassador, he was appointed as a strategic adviser, a consultant, an advocate and a planner for the 2024 Labour party general election campaign. May I suggest that he was appointed—Government Members know this to be true—because he was treacherous, deceitful, a liar and a master manipulator in the political dark arts? That is why the Prime Minister appointed him. There is no defence, is there?
Chris Ward
Just to be clear, he was not appointed to any role in the 2024 election campaign. I remember that campaign very well. Let me clear up two other points that were raised in the debate. As Members made very clear earlier, Mandelson had no role in candidate selection at all. That is done by the national executive committee, and through the rule book. He had absolutely no role in it. [Interruption.] Let me finish this point. He had absolutely no role or say in any reshuffle either. Members keep repeating this, but it is absolutely, fundamentally untrue.
Official Secrets Act Case: Witness Statements
Debate between Chris Ward and Graham Stuart(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Chris Ward
As I have said many times, the Government wanted the prosecution to proceed and allowed every opportunity for evidence to be provided for it and for the CPS to gather that. The Prime Minister has already stated when he was informed that the trial was in that process. He also made it clear yesterday, in response to the right hon. Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat), that it is not his position to interfere. The case was then dropped by the CPS independently.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
The CPS has independence from Ministers; civil servants do not. The whole point of our constitution is that civil servants can never be thrown under the bus because Ministers are responsible. They own everything the civil servants do. There is no carve-out because someone has this high title of being a National Security Adviser. They are a civil servant. It was not once; it happened repeatedly in an iterative process by which the CPS asked for and said there is a gap. What is it? Will the Minister please stop trying to make out that we have a different constitution from the one we have, in which he suggests that somehow Ministers are not responsible for the behaviour of their civil servants when that is the foundation of accountability within our parliamentary system?
Chris Ward
I will refer back to what I have said already: it is not the place of Ministers, under this or previous Governments, to be vetting or interfering in evidence on that matter.