Lobbying of Government Committee

Craig Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

I will not comment on how Select Committee Chairs are sometimes elected in this place. But as a former Select Committee Chair, I know how seriously colleagues around this House would take this responsibility, as the hon. Gentleman does. We are prepared to make a concession to Conservative Members. We will accept that this Committee can be chaired by a Back Bencher from the governing party as long as there is cross-party representation on the Committee, as with other Select Committees.

The Conservative party is at a fork in the road. If MPs vote for this motion, a proper investigation can take place, led by a team with the confidence of this House, not someone handpicked from the board of one of the Government Departments embroiled in this scandal. But if they vote against it, as the Prime Minister has told them all to do, I am sorry to say that they too will be part of the Government’s attempt to cover up Tory sleaze. All Members here today should reflect on who they are here to serve: their constituents and their country, or their narrow party interests?

The stakes are high for our democracy and our public life. It was a past Conservative Government—embroiled in sleaze in the 1990s—who eventually recognised the need for standards to rise and to create the Nolan principles. The Nolan principles of public life have to live and breathe through all those in public office serving our great country. Yesterday we learned that the Government’s former head of procurement was an adviser for Greensill while still a civil servant. Incredibly, that was approved. The defence is that it was “not uncommon”. What on earth was happening at the Cabinet Office and at the heart of Government to allow these conflicts of interest to fester? Sir John Major, who witnessed the cash for questions scandal and other Tory sleaze in the ’90s when he was Prime Minister also believes that the rules need to be changed again.

One of the Nolan principles—as you well know, Mr Speaker—is leadership. With that in mind, where is the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster today? Where was the Chancellor of the Exchequer yesterday? What have they got to hide? There is a wider pattern of behaviour with the Conservatives here, in the present as well as in the recent past: a Conservative Government who are more interested in private drinks with the owners of private jets than meeting the families bereaved by covid; a Government who gave a 40% pay rise to Dominic Cummings, but a pay cut to nurses; Tory politicians thinking that it is one rule for them and another for everybody else; personal attention lavished on friends of Cameron, while 3 million people are excluded from Government financial support and cannot even get a meeting with the Treasury.

[Craig Williams (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

rose—

[Rachel Reeves]

If the hon. Member wants to defend all that—be my guest.

[Craig Williams]

On the subject of leadership, the hon. Lady has touched on the Scottish Government. But the Welsh Government have of course been in place for 22 years and there is still no lobbying register, and the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments has recently taken the former Labour First Minister to task over an appointment to GFG. On leadership, may I draw the hon. Lady on those points?

[Rachel Reeves]

As far as I am aware, the First Minister of Wales has not appointed a financier as his adviser, nor does he have £30 million-worth of share options that he might fancy exercising. The hon. Gentleman has today abstained in a vote to give nurses a pay rise—put that on your election leaflet at the next general election.

Some £2 billion of public contracts in the last year have gone to friends and donors of the Conservative party, which has been rolling out the red carpet with a VIP fast lane for contracts. Supposedly independent reports have been rewritten by Downing Street. There are undeclared details on who has paid what for a luxury refurbishment of the No. 10 Downing Street flat. Relationships are undisclosed, and there are increasingly frequent breaches and casual disregard of the ministerial code.

Some have asked this week, quite powerfully, “When did we stop caring about honesty and integrity?” That is what this motion is about. What happens in the vote will say so much about our great country, but also about our current Government. That is why I urge all hon. and right hon. Members to do the right thing and back this motion today. Vote for a proper investigation to close the loopholes, to rein in the lobbyists and to lift standards in this great democracy in which we all have the privilege to serve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Craig Williams (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

It is a privilege to speak in this debate. After the opening speech by the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), I was tempted to go straight into a political attack and point out the failures of the Welsh Labour Government, such as not having a lobbying register after 22 years, or list the public bodies in Wales that are led by former Labour Assembly Members, former Labour MPs’ partners or former special advisers. But that will add nothing to public discourse, and it will not help this issue.

I was quite moved by what the Chairman of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), said about his Select Committee. I can attest, as I am sure Members on both sides of the House can, that he will do no favours for the Whips or the Government, and that it is a robust Select Committee. As the Chairman of the Transport Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), said, our Select Committees in this House are robust. The membership is beyond reproach. I jested with my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove about whether this debate was a vote of no confidence in him, but the debate really does not add anything.

My hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) raised three pertinent questions, and there are some serious questions around this issue. I welcome the inquiry and the Minister’s tone. I do not want to disparage the many former Labour Assembly Members who chair health boards or are on the sports body. They have a lot to give to public life. Many of them are doing an excellent job. I welcome their positions after frontline politics and I support a lot of them, but in this debate, it is very tempting for people on both sides to start making churlish comments about cronyism, and we have heard other Members say, “Just because of somebody’s political affiliation.” I would of course love to see more former Conservatives appointed to public bodies in Wales. Perhaps not as many Conservatives are appointed as Labour—Labour has been governing for 22 years, so I am sure their contact books make it a lot easier to contact friends—but that does not take anything away from what they are doing in public life in Wales.

Before I sit down, I will echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove, the Chairman of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, said. This should not be about looking at our Select Committee process and saying that it is not independent enough; that will do nothing for it. We should get behind this inquiry. If Members are unhappy with the inquiry, they can go through the Select Committees that are already in place and have the powers. We all have Members on those Select Committees, and there are already avenues open to the parties in this House to take up these serious concerns.

I will conclude and give the final minute back.