Government Announcements Debate

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Department: Leader of the House

Government Announcements

Julian Lewis Excerpts
Monday 2nd June 2025

(4 days, 16 hours ago)

Commons Chamber
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Lucy Powell Portrait Lucy Powell
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I thank my hon. Friend for all the work he does on the Modernisation Committee. He will know that one of the remits we have set out for the Committee is to ensure more time for Back Benchers to scrutinise Government business. That is a key part of modernising Parliament, and it will ensure that this Chamber is, and will be in the future, the real crucible of national debate that we want it to be. I am sure we will see that today and on other days.

Julian Lewis Portrait Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
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Knowing the Leader of the House to be a decent person, I suspect that behind the scenes, when events of this sort happen, she probably argues quite strongly that announcements should be made to this House first and to the press afterwards. Does she think the reason that is not happening is that the Government genuinely think they will get less publicity to hold a press conference after there has been scrutiny in the House, or is it that they just have no confidence that they can stop their people leaking things in advance?

--- Later in debate ---
Julian Lewis Portrait Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
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Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. You may have noticed that I briefly exited the Chamber to see whether copies of the SDR were available in the Vote Office, and I was told, quite rightly, that no, they would be made available immediately after the Secretary of State had made his statement. If we were to have the press conferences the day after statements—not the day before, or on the same day—everybody would have time to read the report, we would have an initial stab at it, with very little sight of it on the day, and then we could go into it in more detail subsequently, as we usually do.

Lindsay Hoyle Portrait Mr Speaker
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I am sure that that is a good point of clarification on the way forward.