Ministerial Statements

Debate between Paul Beresford and Nick Boles

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important and interesting intervention. I would go further, although I accept that very few people are of the same mind. We make a mistake in thinking that we can somehow reserve to decisions of military or financial sensitivity and urgency the possibility of their being made outside this place and then discussed fully inside this place.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

Does my hon. Friend not agree—from his vast experience in this place, and perhaps also looking from the outside—that although a considerable number of statements are of little or no interest to the House because they are regional, specific or small, perhaps involving one or two MPs, and so on, the decision on that, which the Minister takes, must be subjective, which makes the Minister vulnerable to attack, as we are seeing?

[Nick Boles]

I agree with my hon. Friend. This House has many opportunities to embarrass and annoy Ministers who seem to act with discourtesy towards us. I am not for a minute arguing that we should not make full use of that; I am just arguing against this motion.

I would like to move on to the example of the autumn statement—which my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) raised earlier—in which, as I think we can all agree, some of the most important announcements of this Session were made. It is true, as we should admit without embarrassment, that many of the proposals in the autumn statement were discussed widely in the media—on television, in the newspapers and in the blogosphere—in the several days before the statement. I have no idea whether that was by accident or by design, but I fervently believe that this ensured that public awareness and understanding of the contents of the Government’s plans and their response to the difficult economic situation in which we find ourselves was far higher than it would have been if nothing had been revealed until the statement was made. I ask Members to ask themselves two questions. First, how many people are willing and able, in their busy working lives, either to watch the autumn statement as it is broadcast on television or to read parliamentary reports? Secondly, how many of them, given the slightly weird way in which we all speak, will understand it when they do?