Hacker House Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
John Bercow
Main Page: John Bercow (Speaker - Buckingham)Department Debates - View all John Bercow's debates with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
I too welcome the Minister to his place. I wonder if when he was discussing accepting the job he knew he would be doing the Prime Minister’s bidding in cleaning up his mess.
It is fair to thank and to pay tribute to the bravery and determination of those who fought through the courts to ensure we could be back here today and able to hold the Government to account: my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), Gina Miller and Jo Maugham of the Good Law Project. We thank and salute them.
The blame and bluster that has come out of this Government over this issue and the matter of what happened in the Supreme Court is outrageous. The Prime Minister is under significant pressure to declare what interests and relationship he had with Jennifer Arcuri. There is no disputing that the work is important—I agree with the Minister on that—but, despite what he says about other Members impugning her character, in reality it is the Prime Minister who is impugning her character because of the lack of transparency and his unwillingness to answer questions about their relationship.
The Minister will be aware that Hacker House received £100,000 from the DCMS. Members have already raised the matter of where that business is domiciled. Given the huge amount of public money spent, does he think it appropriate that his Department is investigating itself in those discussions and in that process? I would suggest that that is highly inappropriate and that there should be an independent—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady, but she has exceeded her time by 50% already, so that’s the end of that I’m afraid.
Matt Warman
I am glad that the hon. Lady welcomes the importance of this work. This process, like all Government grant-giving processes, is conducted in a transparent way. The review will not be the Department marking its own homework, and as I said, we will put any further updates to the House as they become available, which will be by the end of next month.
Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)
Earlier in our exchanges, Mr Speaker, the Minister suggested that I try to register with Hacker House. I looked at social media, and saw that many people online had tried to do that, but had received the error message “502 Bad Gateway”. Can you explain why Hacker House seems to have disappeared?
Mr Speaker
The Minister is under no obligation to respond to the point of order, but it is open to him to do so if he wishes.