Defence Responsibilities

Jack Lopresti Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

There were a number of different categories, as I said. Some of them were overseas visits where I was there purely on a defence basis. Some were conferences, for example, where I may have been speaking and Mr Werritty might have been a delegate. Some were long weekends when my wife and I were abroad. Some were longer family holidays. One was a skiing holiday. We need to understand that Ministers have downtime on visits. In particular, when we have long overseas visits, we try to manage our political time, our party political time often, and our personal time. It is unreasonable to think that we should not have any private time at all.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

I would also like to put on the record my support for my right hon. Friend. The way that he has come to the House today, with honesty and courage, to make his statement without any pressure from elsewhere has been excellent. Given where we are, with our troops in action all over the world and with the challenges that we face, it is time that we move on from this and concentrate on the job in hand.

[Dr Fox]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for much of the help that he has given me in recent days. I finally say this: where there are serious issues of probity to be dealt with, we need to deal with them in an open and transparent manner. I hope I have helped with that process today, but I shall continue to co-operate with the Cabinet Secretary in doing so. However, there is an equal duty on those who have genuine allegations of wrongdoing to make that they bring them into the public domain. When we get sniping from the sidelines and innuendo, it does nothing to improve the health of our political process. I hope that if those exist who have such accusations, they bring them forward. I will be very ready to give my explanation, but what I think is unacceptable is this constant sniping and undermining without, it appears, genuine substance.