Government Announcements

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Monday 2nd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We now come to the urgent question. I call the shadow Leader of the House.

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[The Leader of the House of Commons (Lucy Powell)]

I hear your statement, Mr Speaker. I responded to an urgent question on a similar matter on 14 May. I reiterate the commitments I gave then. The “Ministerial Code” is clear:

“When Parliament is in session, the most important announcements of government policy should be made in the first instance in Parliament.”

That is an important principle that the Government stand by and uphold.

Since that last urgent question on 14 May, the Government have made a number of important oral statements to the House, on the infected blood inquiry, on the cross-Government review of sanctions implementation and enforcement, on the charging of individuals under the National Security Act 2023, and on the legal aid cyber-security incident. The Prime Minister has updated the House on the three trade deals that we have struck in the national interest, the Foreign Secretary has updated it on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the Justice Secretary has responded to the sentencing review, and the Defence Secretary has made a statement on the future of the Diego Garcia military base.

This afternoon, the full conclusions of the important strategic defence review will be published and laid before this House first, with a significant statement from the Defence Secretary to follow. I am satisfied that this Government are coming to the House regularly to keep Parliament informed. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am not satisfied, and I think that is the key. Back Benchers on both sides should rightly hear it first. I do not care how many announcements have been made in the House; it is those that have not been made here that we should be talking about.

[Lucy Powell]

As I have said, the Defence Secretary will make a statement this afternoon, and I am satisfied.

I recognise that there are times when we make a judgment on when an oral statement is needed, balancing that with the rest of the day’s business and other factors, but in nearly all instances a written statement is also made, and that is an appropriate mechanism for updating the House. As well as making 153 oral statements during the current Session, we have made 673 written statements.

As I said before the recess, the ministerial code makes it clear that when Parliament is in session, announcements should be made to the House. Let me gently point out that we have only just returned from the recess—as of an hour ago—and before the recess we were at pains to ensure that the House was updated on the subject of the Diego Garcia military base before it adjourned.

The Government and I take our obligations to Parliament very seriously, Mr Speaker, and I will continue to work with you and colleagues throughout the Government to make certain that important announcements are made to the House, and that Members from across the House have ample time to consider issues and ensure that the Government are scrutinised effectively.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Leader of the House.

[Jesse Norman]

Is that really the best that the Leader of the House can do—an “I speak your weight” autocue recitation of points that she has made in her three previous attempts to deal with occasions when the House has been embarrassed and disregarded over the last three weeks alone? It was a hopeless miscue of a response that bordered on a contempt of Parliament itself—yet another attempt to change the subject, blame others and distract attention from the latest fiasco. Evidently the defence of the realm is not important enough to merit making its way up the list of priorities in the Government’s media handouts. Lord Robertson himself, as you have said, Mr Speaker—and I am amazed that you had to intervene on the Leader of the House during her own remarks—would be ashamed and embarrassed to think that this was being done in his name.

Just three weeks ago, the Leader of the House had to be dragged to the House over the Government’s briefing on the immigration White Paper outside the House. That came just days after they had done the same in respect of prisoner recall, the UK-US trade deal and, of course, the Chagos islands. That followed instances involving tuition fees, planning reforms and even the fiscal rules, on which you, Mr Speaker, had to reprove and chastise the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Now we have seen the unhappy sight of the Secretary of State for Defence, no less, extensively briefing the media on the decisions to deploy airborne nuclear weapons and build the next generation of submarines, before coming to the House. Perhaps, as I have said, they were not important enough to merit a mention beforehand.

Journalists have been able to read the strategic defence review since 10.30 am, while the Opposition were prevented from seeing the document until five minutes ago, precisely in order to avoid parliamentary scrutiny. All this is manifestly in breach of the ministerial code, the Nolan principles and, of course, Labour’s own manifesto, demonstrating the Government’s arrogance and complacency and their disdain for the House and for democratic accountability, and this from—the clue is in the title—the Leader of the House, whose job is to protect and safeguard the House and its Members. Unfortunately, her obvious floundering just now made the point far better than I can.

When did the Leader of the House know about these announcements, and what steps did she take to prevent the media briefings and ensure that the announcements were made to the House of Commons first? Will she now apologise for yet another high-handed Government decision for which she alone is fully responsible, in this instance, to the House?

[Lucy Powell]

It is nice to see the right hon. Gentleman in his place and respecting Parliament today—that is not always the case.

As I have said before, I believe strongly that the Government should be and have been making the most important announcements to the House when Parliament is in session. We have made more oral statements than the previous Government did in their entire last Session—we have made 154 statements in 140 sitting days, compared with their 72 in 101 sitting days—and we have made many written statements and answered parliamentary questions. We had the statement on Diego Garcia on the day that the deal was signed, despite difficulties with the timing. We had a statement on the US economic deal on the day that it was signed, and the Prime Minister updated the House after the EU trade deal.

As I have said, the SDR has now been given to the Opposition and is being laid before the House. There will be time for colleagues to scrutinise it and to question the Defence Secretary on it this afternoon. The Government responses to the sentencing review and to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s report on the women’s state pension age, as well as many other major announcements, such as the upgrade in defence spending, were all made to the House first.

I am curious to know whether the shadow Leader of the House raised these important issues with the previous Government when he was a Minister or a Back Bencher, because I remember many, many occasions when they disrespected this House, and I do not remember hearing his voice at the time. I remember when the Procedure Committee, I and many others wanted the then Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron, to be accountable to the House of Commons. The previous Government did nothing about it, and I do not remember the right hon. Gentleman saying anything about that. I recall the then Culture Secretary announcing the end of the BBC licence fee and, separately, the privatisation of Channel 4 on Twitter, with no intention of coming to the House to explain those major policy changes.

The previous Prime Minister, on the first day of a very long recess, announced that he was scrapping the Government’s net zero targets—he did not come to the House to explain that. He also announced the scrapping of High Speed 2 during a conference recess and never came to the House to account for it. During covid, one of the Conservatives’ many Prime Ministers announced major changes to our way of life to the media and not to Parliament, such as the 2020 winter lockdown—he did not come here to talk about that—and the covid vaccine roll-out. When he closed the borders and then reopened them, he announced it to the media and not to Parliament. Let us not forget that the Supreme Court found that Parliament was illegally prorogued by the previous Government. Do you remember when the former Prime Minister was found to have misled Parliament? There is no greater disrespect to Parliament.

Rather than upholding the ministerial code, the previous Government ignored breaches of it time and again, with reports sitting on the Prime Minister’s desk and nothing being done about them. We, by contrast, have strengthened the ministerial code. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) laughs from a sedentary position, but we have given the independent adviser on the ministerial code the power to instigate his own investigations. Therefore, we have strengthened it.

Not only did the previous Government disrespect Parliament; they did not have enough for Parliament to do. They had a threadbare King’s Speech, with banning pedicabs the pinnacle of their ambition in their last year in government. Now that they are in opposition, they seem to be carrying on the same and hardly turn up for work. They could have used any one of their Opposition days to raise these issues, but they did not. They have many other parliamentary devices at their disposal, and they do not use them. They were a zombie Government, and now they are a zombie Opposition. The next time they bring forward an urgent question, they might want to check their own record before giving us lectures.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I thank the Leader of the House for reminding me of the mistakes of the previous Government in not coming to the Floor of the House? I would have hoped that this Government had learned from the mistakes that have just been highlighted. To try to defend what you criticise is not a way forward.

I am trying to ensure that Members on both sides of the House are allowed to question Ministers first, rather than watching announcements on Sky News. It is interesting that the SDR has been offered to journalists but that the Members here have not had the chance to see it. I agree with the Leader of the House, and I thank her again for reminding me, but let us now see the Government treat this House in the way that I expect.

[Sir Roger Gale (Herne Bay and Sandwich) (Con)]

Will you take a point of order now, Mr Speaker?

[Mr Speaker]

No, I will not, because we have to wait till the end, as you well know, Sir Roger, as one of the most senior Members.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I think my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is right to remind us of the many breaches of this rule by Her Majesty’s Government when the Conservative party was in power. However, in the middle of this mud-slinging, let me raise a still small voice of calm. The current Prime Minister pledged to be more transparent, open and proper in government. Will my right hon. Friend go back to the Cabinet and remind it that proper scrutiny in this House first, with untrammelled questions for an hour or more at a time, is more scrutiny than the Government would get in a press conference and is the proper place to do this? I hope she will take that message back, so that statements such as the one we are about to hear are given on the Floor of the House first.

[Lucy Powell]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. As she will know from the many times I have said it before, I do regularly remind the Cabinet that this is an important aspect of being a Cabinet Minister, or indeed a Minister. We are doing our very best to make sure that there are regular oral statements to this House on important matters and that they are brought here first. In the absence of an oral statement, there is a written ministerial statement, of which notice is given the day before so that colleagues have ample time, as she says, to properly scrutinise all these announcements.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

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[Lucy Powell]

I thank the hon. Member for that. I will make no apology for the fact that we are doing lots of things—we are making lots of announcements, and we are delivering the change the country voted for—and that does bring with it competing demands. As I say, when the House is in session, statements and updates will be made to this House first. Sometimes that will be via a written ministerial statement and sometimes it will be by an oral statement—it depends.

We also have to balance statements with the rest of the day’s business. I would point out to colleagues that we have an important Second Reading debate today, with dozens and dozens of Members down to speak. We are now having two urgent questions before a very important statement and then other business as well. We do have to balance these things in the House’s interests, but the statement is being made to the House today. The Defence Secretary will shortly be in his place, and I am sure he will spend a long time answering questions on it.

[Mr Speaker]

I am sure that criticism was not aimed at me for granting two UQs. The reason I have granted two UQS is that the Government did not come here first with the strategic defence review. If they had, we would not be having the UQs and there would be no pressure on time.

[Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)]

Trust, integrity and transparency must be the watchwords of our politics, but those principles were worn extremely thin under the previous Government. What steps is the Leader of the House taking to redouble our commitment to trust and integrity, because our constituents expect no less?

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[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

I think the word the Leader of the House was looking for was “sorry”. There is much in this place which, as we know, is complicated and arcane, but the ministerial code is crystal clear on this point. The job of the Leader of the House is to represent this place and Back Benchers of all parties around the Cabinet table to make sure that this place hears things of such vital importance first. As important as public transport is, may I suggest that the defence of the realm is a little more important than the Government’s buses Bill, which will have no Divisions this evening? Will the Leader of the House please tell us why she thinks No. 10 is getting this so wrong and what she is doing to try to put it right?

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[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your advice on the following, as I seek to set the record straight. At the weekend I became aware of an email sent to a group of journalists from the Ministry of Defence, which stated:

“We will have a reading room open for you from 1030 to Horse Guards”

on Monday.

“You will have the opportunity to read through the full embargoed SDR publication”.

After seeing that, I emailed the Secretary of State’s office on Sunday afternoon and asked whether, given that journalists would see the publication at 10.30, we could be sent a copy at 9 am. They refused. They told us we would get a copy of the statement—that is, the oral statement to the House—in the usual way. I then repeatedly asked the Minister for the Armed Forces, who is present in the Chamber, if we could get a copy of the SDR. He refused. I have now been told something else, which is that representatives of industry were allowed to see the SDR at 10.30. This is a multibillion-pound industry that is highly market-sensitive.

Mr Speaker, can I ask your advice on this point? As I understand it, the Vote Office has multiple physical hard copies of the strategic defence review, which I have not read at all, my colleagues have not read and no other parliamentary colleagues have read. It was given to me only as I came into the Chamber, so obviously I have not been able to read it. Journalists have had five hours. It is unacceptable. Can I ask if the Vote Office could, exceptionally, be asked to release it now?

[Mr Speaker]

I am going to come to that, but there are a couple more points. I am very disappointed. If the industry has seen this strategic defence review when Members of this House and members of the Defence Committee have not seen it, something has gone fundamentally wrong here. I really believe we need the answers. It is up to the Leader of the House, and I do not want to press her, but it might be worth her going away and getting some answers and coming back to the House. The fact that journalists, as well as defence people who have skin in the game, have been allowed to see it before MPs makes me very concerned.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

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.

[Mr Speaker]

I am sure that that is a good point of clarification on the way forward.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I have just seen the headline in The Telegraph that dropped at just after 10 o’clock this morning which says, “I’ve read the Defence Review”. This journalist must have been fully briefed and handed a copy of it, long before anybody else. Surely that is an abuse.

[Mr Speaker]

I call Helen Maguire.

[Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I wonder if the Minister wants to correct the record because, yes, I was offered a private briefing this morning, but it was absolutely clarified that I would not receive the SDR until the Minister stood up. I received it 40 minutes ago.

[Mr Speaker]

I call Simon Hoare.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Given the seriousness of the issues—the defence of the realm is the first duty of Government, as we know—is there any merit in you, sir, considering suspending the House to allow those who are to be called to speak on behalf of their respective parties at least the courtesy that has clearly been extended to industry leaders and journalists? I believe that there is a precedent for that.

[Mr Speaker]

I call Stuart Anderson.

[Stuart Anderson (South Shropshire) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Is there any way we can have a list of the commercial companies who have had sight of the review ahead of anybody else, because commercially sensitive decisions might be made that impact the defence industry and give people a market advantage?

[Mr Speaker]

You make the point that I was hinting at before. I am very concerned that people who have skin in the game may be able to take advantage of what is in the report. I hope that no trading has been done on the back of it, because that would be a real concern. I find it quite appalling that Members still do not have the report. The Leader of the House could, if she wishes, suggest that we allow the report, so that Members have the chance to read it. It is totally out of order that we know the report is sat there and could have been made available, but nobody has been given the chance to read it. Rather than my suspending the House—time is tight—people could go and collect a copy of the report now, and could be reading it before the next urgent question. Does the Leader of the House agree?

[Lucy Powell]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. My understanding—I will check with the Defence Secretary—is that these things are normally published when the Secretary of State sits down; it is a bit like the Budget. I understand that the Opposition Front Benchers have a copy of the report now. The Defence Secretary is here; I do not know whether he is happy for it to be published earlier.

[Mr Speaker]

I was offered a briefing this morning, but I had already read it all in The Times; the only thing I was not offered is a copy of the strategic defence review. Business and the media have seen it. Who else might come out of the woodwork who has seen it? It is only right that Members of this House should now have an opportunity to see it, so that their questions can be informed by what is in the review. Secretary of State, are you happy to ensure that?

[The Secretary of State for Defence (John Healey)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. We have followed—[Interruption.] You want an answer from me, Mr Speaker, and I will certainly give you this: we have followed the procedure from the last defence review, when the shadow Defence Secretary, the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), was a Defence Minister. I was the shadow Defence Secretary at that time. We had no advance copy of the defence review. We were not offered a briefing, which I have offered him and the other Front Benchers. I am really concerned to ensure that the House has proper access to the report, but we have been following convention. You are quite right, Mr Speaker, that copies of the defence review are in the Vote Office, as is established procedure. They would normally be made available when I sat down after my statement. In these circumstances, following your encouragement, I suggest that Members of this House be given access to them in advance of my statement.

[Mr Speaker]

I thank the Secretary of State for that, and I am sure that Members will receive their copies as we speak.