Points of Order

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I am grateful to the Father of the House for his point of order and for giving me notice of it. I have paid careful attention to the point that he made. I can assure him that the Vote Office has printed from the internet and prepared copies of the document that he mentions. I entirely agree with him that it is important that the House be well educated on the facts of the matter that we are about to discuss, so I have myself obtained some copies. I will give one forthwith to the Whip to give to the Minister, and one to the Labour Whip to give to the shadow Minister. I hope that the Father of the House will thus be satisfied that the document that he considers very important is fully available. I do not have copies here for everyone, but they are available in the Vote Office.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. On 12 August 2021, seven people were shot in Keyham and Ford, and we lost five of them. The subsequent inquest identified a catalogue of serious failings in our police, and made recommendations to the Home Office. On 21 February, the Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), confirmed to the House that he had asked the coroner for a delay in responding to the inquest’s findings until 30 June, and said that

“no doubt there will be a statement to the House”—[Official Report, 21 February 2023; Vol. 728, c. 158]

at that point. That is tomorrow. The families of the victims are desperate to know how such tragedies can be prevented in future. Can you advise me on whether you have heard from the Home Office that an oral statement will be made to the House, and what more can be done to ensure that any measures announced as a result of the inquest receive proper parliamentary scrutiny so that no tragedy like the one we saw in Plymouth can ever happen again?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I can well understand his consternation. The matter to which he refers was truly a tragedy, and there are families who must be suffering dreadfully because of it. The only answer that I can give him from the Chair is that I have no notice of the intention of any Minister to make such a statement, but I am sure that those on the Treasury Bench will have heard what he has said, and I sincerely hope that his concerns will be conveyed to the appropriate Minister. Of course, I hardly need remind him that there are various mechanisms that he can use to raise this matter substantively on the Floor of the House, and I am sure that he will go to the Table Office to see what he can do.