Lobby and Media Briefings: Journalists' Access
Debate between Meg Hillier and Chloe Smith(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Chloe Smith
The type of Government we are talking about is the type that has just won a resounding majority at a general election and has the support of the people. I think that is a pretty good answer to his question.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
This does smack of either a deliberate decision to make sure that the mainstream press is being discussed in this way in this House today, or it was just an almighty mistake. Will the Minister, who is a reasonable woman, not use this opportunity to say sorry and that it will not happen again?
Chloe Smith
The hon. Lady takes us on to very, very sober ground, and rightly so. She has great experience as a scrutiniser in this House, but the fact is that that is the wrong characterisation of what has happened. I have set out what the facts of the matter are: what we are dealing with is standard lobby procedures supplemented by an additional specialist briefing. There is nothing more sinister than that, and I think that even she, who is also a very reasonable Member of this Chamber, is just going a little too far.