Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Ellie Reeves and Lindsay Hoyle(4 weeks ago)
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Ellie Reeves
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. As the Leader of the House has said:
“This new Parliament offers a chance to turn the page after the sorry and sordid record of the last.”—[Official Report, 25 July 2024; Vol. 752, c. 857.]
That is why we will be issuing a new robust ministerial code. As we promised in our manifesto, the House has established a Modernisation Committee, which will be tasked with driving up standards and addressing the culture of the House. That sits alongside the work the Cabinet Office is doing to improve standards and confidence in politics.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
The Opposition support the new Government’s aspirations for the highest ministerial standards, and we acknowledge the significant experience that the Prime Minister’s former chief of staff can bring to her role as envoy to the nations and regions. Why then, in breach of Cabinet Office guidance, have Ministers not published a word on her terms of reference, her new salary or her special adviser severance payment, and is she correct in her understanding that she is at the top of the list of new peers?
Reporting Ministerial Gifts and Hospitality
Debate between Ellie Reeves and Lindsay Hoyle(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Ellie Reeves
My hon. Friend is right to point out the VIP lanes for covid contracts. The fact is that Conservative Members had the opportunity to take a stand when Owen Paterson broke the rules, and they voted instead to rip up those very rules.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
I must say that I am startled to see Conservative MPs acting as though they were defenders of standards in public life. Under the last Government, Ministers were subject to less transparency than Back-Bench MPs. We will never know the interests of some of the Ministers who served under Liz Truss, because their ministerial interests were never published. However, I say to the new Government that if Ministers do not treat the need to restore standards with the urgency that it deserves, there will be no sympathy for them from the public, either. The independent adviser on ministerial interests has made it clear that the current system produces a list of interests, not a full register. Will the Minister guarantee that we will now see a full register published, just as there is for MPs, and set out the timescale? Will the Government rectify the fact that we went months under the previous Government without a list of interests being published by retrospectively publishing those interests? Will the Government enshrine the ministerial code in law, and include in that law timescales for regularly publishing a register of interests, so that we can have confidence that it will be published? Finally, will the Government make the role of the ethics adviser truly independent by empowering the adviser to begin their investigations and publish their own reports?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Ellie Reeves and Lindsay Hoyle(3 months, 4 weeks ago)
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The Minister without Portfolio (Ellie Reeves)
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I made a statement on the CrowdStrike IT outage in this House on Monday. There will be a lessons-learned process as a result of that, and also a Bill going before Parliament to ensure that we are resilient in relation to our cyber-security. That will strengthen our defences and ensure that more digital services than ever are protected.