Oral Answers to Questions

Justin Madders Excerpts

Thursday 11th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

As the hon. Lady will know, we continue to make considerable progress on all the actions set out in that framework. She is right to highlight the challenges that we face in some resilience areas, particularly in relation to cyber-resilience. That is why I am conducting a programme to step up our cyber-resilience, for example by creating a new agency to ensure that we are across the cyber-resilience of all Government Departments and annually appraise them of it.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

5. How many people his Department has identified as unsuitable for speaking at Government events based on their social media history.

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Jeremy Quin)]

The Cabinet Office has drawn up guidance to help protect civil service values. Taxpayers’ money should not unwittingly be used to pay for speakers linked to abhorrent organisations or individuals who promote hate or discriminatory beliefs, which could bring the civil service into disrepute. We do not hold a central record of speakers identified as unsuitable, but as the guidance has been described to me as “codified common sense”, I trust that the number will be very few.

[Justin Madders]

Well, if the guidance is common sense, the Minister will have no problem with publishing it, will he? At the moment, there is Government guidance to ban people from speaking at Government events, but we have not seen it. We do not know who is on that list, and we do not even know if the people on the list have been told that they appear on it. That is more like North Korea, is it not?

[Jeremy Quin]

I have nothing to hide. If the hon. Gentleman would like it published, I will publish it. It is internal guidance, and it therefore tends to be internal, but I will lay a copy in the Library. He is a sensible person and will appreciate that there are certain abhorrent organisations that we should not pay or give a platform to and cause embarrassment to our civil service or our country. But I will publish the guidance.