Jack Straw
Main Page: Jack Straw (Independent - Blackburn)AstraZeneca (Pfizer Bid)
Jack Straw ExcerptsUrgent 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.
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Vince Cable
It is precisely because of the legal position that I have been studiously neutral on this matter. It is fair to say that there are elements of ambiguity—it is not absolutely clear—but the main position is exactly as the right hon. Gentleman described it: under the legislation we inherited from the Labour party, Ministers do not engage with decisions except in three very specific areas of public interest.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
May I first say to the Secretary of State that whatever the defects of the 2002 legislation, which we have learned from experience, this Government have done absolutely nothing in four years to change that legislation, so I assume that they consent to it? Secondly, there is nothing in the legislation that, in the words of the Daily Mail today, requires the British Government or certainly the Prime Minister to go
“grovelling to an overseas corporation”.
Does the Secretary of State not accept that there has been a very sharp contrast between the neutral stand that he has tried to take and that of his fellow Ministers, including the Prime Minister, who have been supine in their approach to Pfizer?
Vince Cable
They have not been supine at all. My senior colleagues in government have been engaged in discussions with both companies, making the points about the national interest that I have stressed today.
I want to counter the point that the Government did absolutely nothing in response to the history of Kraft-Cadbury. One of the first things I did when I came into this job was to initiate a process that led the Takeover Panel to introduce very substantial reforms—the put up, shut up provision, which is the reason why we now have a 26 May deadline; the requirements for consultation; the requirements that directors have to take a long-term view in making decisions of this kind; and, crucially, the requirements of transparency. My opposite number has called in the press for transparency to be introduced, but it is already there: it was one of the changes introduced when this Government came into power.