Government Policy on Health

Sarah Olney Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat Front-Bench spokesperson, Sarah Olney.

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

The Liberal Democrats find it deeply ironic that the shadow Health Secretary has raised this question on the involvement of people with no formal appointment in the development of Government policy. Are they forgetting their record in government? Perhaps we should remind everyone that, under the Conservatives, it was their friends that benefited from large contracts to supply the Government during the covid pandemic. The result is that, just today, as the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) has already highlighted, Transparency International UK has revealed multiple red flags in more than 130 covid contracts totalling over £15.3 billion. With the Conservatives out of power, we have the opportunity to clean up our politics, so will the Secretary of State update the House on whether the Prime Minister plans to appoint his own ethics adviser or whether Sir Laurie Magnus will remain in the post? Will the ethics adviser be empowered to initiate their own investigations and publish their own reports?

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for her serious contribution. She is right to say that transparency matters. That is why meetings in my Department, and their attendees, will be published in the right and proper way on a quarterly basis.

It is also right to draw a distinction between those areas of business and meetings in the Department that are about generating ideas and policy discussion, and those that are about taking Government decisions. It is right that people from outside government come into the Department for Health and Social Care, or any Department, to lend their expertise and share their views, and it is right that Ministers make decisions absent of those outsiders. That is the distinction I would draw. The hon. Member raises a specific point about the Prime Minister’s ethics adviser. This is a Prime Minister who does take ethics seriously and will not behave in the way that his Conservative predecessors did. As for individuals, that is a decision for the Prime Minister, but I will ensure that the hon. Member gets a more fulsome reply.