Civil Service Impartiality

Marcus Fysh Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

That would help. I have been pondering the earlier question about the efficacy of people moving from the civil service into party political roles. Clearly that cannot be deemed an impossibility, and many of us have benefited from time in the civil service before taking on political roles. But there are ways of doing this; that is what is so important, and it would be very helpful if the Labour party could transparently set out exactly what took place.

[Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)]

The House and the country should know that on 7 September 2019 I witnessed Sue Gray, then permanent secretary at the Department of Finance in Northern Ireland, discuss with a special adviser to the UK Cabinet Office how to exclude solutions other than high alignment with EU law and regulation from consideration by the Government in respect of Northern Ireland and the withdrawal agreement. A month later, the Government proposed the Northern Ireland protocol, which subjected Northern Ireland to EU law and regulation. Since then, Sue Gray has been the civil servant specifically responsible for advising on Union considerations in Government. It was reported this week that Sue Gray was present at the briefing of Cabinet Ministers on the Prime Minister’s Windsor framework, which, among other things, appears to confirm and embed the application of EU law and regulation in Northern Ireland—

[Mr Speaker]

Order.

[Mr Fysh]

Does the—

[Mr Speaker]

No, sit down.

[Mr Fysh]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Do you want to go out? No, right. I pulled up a Member on the other side about this, because once you go on and on there must be a question. I hope there is a question now.

[Mr Fysh]

Absolutely right.

[Mr Speaker]

Sorry, sit down. You don’t judge me. You just lost it completely.