Nolan Principles
Tessa Munt Excerpts(3 days, 9 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Sally Jameson)
I welcome this Backbench Business debate on the seven principles of public life or, as they are also known, the Nolan principles. I thank the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray) for opening the debate and raising some important examples from her constituency, which will have been heard by many people. As she will know, councillors can be referred to the Standards Commission for Scotland, and I hope that that will be done, but her speech has highlighted some important points, particularly in respect of transparency in Holyrood.
A year ago today, my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven (Chris Ward) stood at this Dispatch Box to respond to an Adjournment debate on this very issue. Of course, the principles remain the same as they were on that evening—openness, accountability, objectivity, honesty, leadership, integrity and selflessness—but right hon. and hon. Members will be aware that we now stand on the brink of significant change on the matter of standards across the full spectrum of public life. The House knows that the principles are the foundation of standards in public life—something we all aspire to and that unites us across the Floor of this House and the other place. They sit behind the codes of conduct that are imposed for Ministers, special advisers, civil servants and others in public life, and the House knows all too well that public trust can be eroded when those standards are ignored and forgotten.
I will not seek to rehearse the arguments made by my hon. Friend last year, but I do wish to talk about the progress we have made in that time and address some of the points raised by hon. Members across the House. I am delighted to say that the Ethics and Integrity Commission, which sits at the heart of our standards system, has now been operational for 13 months. It has produced its first report into lobbying, the business appointment rules and disclosure in July. The chair of the commission has also reported to the Prime Minister as part of his annual responsibilities, setting out the state of the standards landscape across the public sector. The Prime Minister will respond to that shortly, and I am sure the House will be updated then.
The commission is currently looking into public sector codes of conduct in preparation for the commencement of the duty of candour as part of what is widely known as the Hillsborough law. We are immensely grateful to the commission for its work to drive up ethical standards in a busy year, and we look forward to seeing the progress over the years ahead.
The Public Office (Accountability) Bill, or Hillsborough law, is approaching its remaining stages in the House of Lords, having already passed in the Commons back in July. The Government are working closely with Members in the other place who are rigorously examining that legislation as we head towards Report. The Ministry of Justice is leading on this legislation, but the Cabinet Office owns the duty of candour provisions, which are significant and form a considerable part of the Bill.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
On the Hillsborough Bill, have the Government reconsidered their decision not to include more than first-tier contractors, and therefore not to include subcontractors or subcontractors of subcontractors? It is evident that we must have truth telling right the way down the system when so many services are contracted out—this has to change.
Sally Jameson
I take the hon. Member’s point and will come back to her on that. As I say, the Bill is mainly with the Ministry of Justice, but I will ensure that she gets a response. I will not take any more interventions, given the time we have left.
On the points raised by hon. Members on the independent adviser, the role advising the Prime Minister on the ministerial code has existed for 20 years. He is not an independent regulator, and the Government are not minded to change that in legislation. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) for his work on anti-corruption as chair of the APPG. I know that he recently met my noble Friend Baroness Twycross to discuss a number of issues, some of which he has raised today.
The Government are working with Parliament to restore a politics of service consistent with the high standards expected of public office holders. The Modernisation Committee is exploring ways to drive up standards that also address matters of culture and procedure in the House of Commons, and the Government believe that the primary job of MPs is to represent their constituents. The Government fully support the inquiry being undertaken by the Committee on Standards to consider further changes to the rules on second jobs so that there are very limited exceptions, such as for MPs who need to do a minimum number of hours to maintain existing professional qualifications. I am sure that a number of the points raised in the House about this issue will have been heard.
I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Dr Rushworth) on mayoral accountability. As he knows, I am working closely on this as part of the rewiring the state delivery plan, and I hope to be able to update him and others on that very soon. I also take the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) on how accountable government needs to be weaved throughout the rewiring the state programme across all tiers of Government as we progress through the devolution agenda.
The EIC published its report on 9 July, having reviewed the current arrangements relating to financial disclosures for Ministers and senior officials; transparency around lobbying, including the Government’s publication of monthly and quarterly integrity data; and the business appointment rules. I thank the commission and its chair, Douglas Chalmers, for its thorough and considered work on these important matters. The Government are carefully considering the report’s findings and will present their response to Parliament in the not-too-distant future.
Let me turn to some of the points raised by the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Bridlington and The Wolds (Charlie Dewhirst). For legal reasons, I cannot discuss debarment, but he will be aware of what the legislation says and the powers that the Government now have in relation to that. I share his concern and annoyance at the performance of Capita in the civil service pension scheme, and we continue to work night and day to ensure that that is resolved.
In relation to standards in local government, the Localism Act 2011 requires every local authority in England to adopt a code of conduct that conforms to the Nolan principles. The Government are committed to whole-system reform of the local government standards framework to make it stronger and more effective, and we will legislate on that when parliamentary time allows.
I am aware that I have not covered all the points raised in the debate, but I have prevented myself from responding to some of the ludicrous claims from the Opposition. I want to express my full support for my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Heeley (Louise Haigh), who is doing an incredible job as our First Secretary of State and is a trailblazer for women in politics across the country.
Madam Deputy Speaker, as you and the rest of the House will know, this Government take standards in public life incredibly seriously. I welcome this debate and all the views expressed on the Nolan principles, which have been heard by the Government, and I look forward to further conversations as the Government report back on many of the issues raised today.
Oral Answers to Questions
Tessa Munt Excerpts(2 months ago)
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The Minister for Intergovernmental Relations and European Relations (Mr Hamish Falconer)
We are engaged in discussions with the European Union on exactly the questions that the hon. Member refers to. We have made good progress in the first two years; I wish to go further, as I set out in my answer to the question before.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
Returning to the emergency alerts, what assessment has the Secretary of State made of issuing alerts on a regional or county basis for important but more local emergencies, such as bluetongue outbreaks in cattle and sheep in rural areas?
Dan Jarvis
I hope that the hon. Member heard my earlier response about how seriously we take the issuing of the alert, and how we take considerable effort to look carefully at how it has worked and whether it can be improved in future. I say to her that every emergency alert is carefully co-ordinated with the responding public bodies and agencies, and each request is evaluated on a case-by-case basis to ensure that it is necessary for public safety.
Oral Answers to Questions
Tessa Munt Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Chris Ward)
There are four sectors where we are using national security guidance, but the support for SMEs is much broader, too. I will happily talk to my hon. Friend and come back to her on particular parts of her constituency, but this plan will be nationwide, supporting all parts of the country, with more than £7 billion of Government money going to SMEs.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
Food security is national security, and I am glad that the Government recognised that earlier this year. It is critical national infrastructure. As the Government pursue their building of 1.5 million homes, with which I absolutely agree, can we make sure that the Minister’s Department talks to other Departments across Government so that we do not lose valuable agricultural land? We are already importing 55% of our food, and this house building could undermine the UK’s already fragile food sector.
Dame Angela Eagle
I assure the House that, given the Department I was in previously, I am able to join up the “food security is national security” mantra in a stronger way than has perhaps happened. The Government’s land use framework, which was published earlier in the year, demonstrates how we can ensure through multiple land use that we can build the homes we need and grow the food we need. The farming road map published yesterday demonstrates a plan for growth for UK primary production.
National Security
Tessa Munt Excerpts(6 months ago)
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Dan Jarvis
I am grateful to the hon. and gallant Member for his contribution, as I always am. He knows me well enough that I can be quite candid with him in saying that I do not think the Foreign Secretary will need any encouragement from me. She will share the concern of Ministers right across this Government about the recent activity—she will have seen that very clearly when she served as Home Secretary. I agree that the kind of activity he describes is totally unacceptable, and this Government will absolutely stand against it. We are constantly making sure that we have the right legislative framework, toolkit and resources to guard against the nature of the threats we face, including from China. It is completely unacceptable that any nation, whoever they are, think that they can undermine our freedom of speech, our democracy and our sovereignty. It is not going to be allowed to happen.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
I thank the Minister for his statement. He has confirmed the roll-out of new training for police officers and staff to increase their understanding of state threats. Will that training be mandatory for officers in all police forces and all police roles, including police community support officers and special constables as well as back-office staff? How will it be implemented? Will it be in person or online? If it is online, will it be passive or active? Are participants just going to tick a series of boxes when they have read stuff, or are they actually going to be in an interactive session? How long will the first sweep of those staff take? I am very happy for the Minister to write to me about these matters, but the sweep through existing staff might take quite a long time. Has he given any consideration to including in that training people who have a lot of frontline experience, such as staff from the Department for Work and Pensions, health, social services and local authorities?
Dan Jarvis
The hon. Lady makes an important and helpful point. I can give her an assurance that I discuss these matters with policing colleagues regularly. I hope she will understand that it is probably not for me, as the Security Minister, to be delving into the individual arrangements that different police forces have, but I am confident that all police forces understand the benefit and the importance of this training activity in the way that she has described. Let me consider further what she has said, and I will write to her with a more considered response.
Oral Answers to Questions
Tessa Munt Excerpts(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Prime Minister
May I start by wishing my hon. Friend a happy birthday? [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”]
I will make sure that Ministers meet my hon. Friend to hear more detail about his particular proposal. We are committed to delivering 1.5 million homes this Parliament. We are prioritising the development of brownfield sites, ensuring that the default answer to brownfield proposals is a yes. We will go further and faster now that our Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 is law, despite being opposed by every Opposition party—a coalition of blockers.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
The Prime Minister may be aware that in December, for the first time in over three decades, Defence Ministers met the families of those killed in the 1994 RAF Chinook crash on the Mull of Kintyre. The Ministry of Defence promised “ongoing dialogue” with them. Is he also aware that, despite receiving pages of new evidence presented at that meeting that show the Chinook was not airworthy, the MOD chose not to keep its word and contacted instead the Press Association, saying that no new evidence had been presented about the cause of the crash? The Prime Minister knows, because the families have written to him, as the MOD knows too, that the families are seeking not a public inquiry into the cause of the crash, but to know the reason why their loved ones were placed on board an aircraft which, according to the MOD’s own test pilots and engineers, was described as “positively dangerous”, “unairworthy” and “not to be relied on in any way whatsoever”? Will he agree to meet the families, to rebuild trust and to offer the promised dialogue that the MOD clearly finds so difficult to achieve?
The Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Lady for raising this case; I will make sure that is looked at again in the light of what she has said, and that the families get the relevant meeting.
Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address
Tessa Munt Excerpts(7 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Darren Jones
I know that Baroness Anderson in the other place will be listening with great intent to my hon. Friend’s question. I was pleased to get the Prime Minister’s support to appoint Baroness Anderson as an additional Minister in the Cabinet Office to take on this additional work, given the seriousness with which we take the need for modernisation and reform. I look forward to the proposals that she will bring forward in due course.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
It has been revealed that Peter Mandelson was given top-level briefings before his vetting was finalised. Who did that, and who will hold those people to account? Will the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister write to me if he is not able to answer that question now?
Darren Jones
As the Prime Minister has already said, the length of time it takes between an ambassador’s appointment and agreement from the host country, and for certain vetting to take place, meant that in the past there had been an established process to allow for ambassadors to start work and to be announced before the vetting was completed. We are reviewing that process to make sure that there are not such gaps in the future.
Extreme Climate and Weather Events: National Resilience
Tessa Munt Excerpts(8 months ago)
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Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
The hon. Lady mentions the Environment Agency, which is causing quite high levels of stress. I should declare an interest: my partner is a farmer, and we had an 80-acre lake for some weeks on the farm. The Environment Agency started thinking about bringing the pumps only after the storms had come. What we need is for the pumps to be there already, so that they can start to pump water away as the storms come in. Otherwise, everybody gets flooded and it is really catastrophic.
Jayne Kirkham
Of course, the EA has struggled with funding for the past 10 years, after it had been cut so badly.
Lord Mandelson: Government Response to Humble Address
Tessa Munt Excerpts(8 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Darren Jones
I am not sure which documents specifically the hon. Gentleman refers to. I note that the documents that were released by the US Department of Justice, and previously via Bloomberg in September 2025, were documents that the Prime Minister and the Government were not privy to until those disclosures had taken place.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in connection to WhistleblowersUK, a not-for-profit organisation. I am concerned that we still have no conclusion to the Public Office (Accountability) Bill. It seems to be stuck on amendment 23, which still is being discussed. I am not sure how the Government will ensure that there are credible sanctions, maybe against Ministers who fail to whistleblow. Will the Minister commit to protecting whistleblowers by establishing a new independent office of the whistleblower, so that members of the public understand that they can have legal protections and so that they have much greater awareness of their rights about whistleblowing?
Darren Jones
I hear the strong interest of Liberal Democrat Members in the office for the whistleblower proposal. As I said to the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr Morrison), I am happy to look at those details when her colleagues write to me with them. The Government have committed to bring the duty of candour Bill back to the House as quickly as possible and for it to be completed in this Session. We are in the process of negotiations with the families, the intelligence agencies and the Intelligence and Security Committee on one final issue. As soon as we are able to resolve that, we hope to progress the Bill at pace.
Standards in Public Life
Tessa Munt Excerpts(9 months ago)
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Darren Jones
As the hon. Lady will have heard, if the Prime Minister had had access to the information that he now has about the depth and extent of the relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and Peter Mandelson, Peter Mandelson would not have been appointed in the first place.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
I direct the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in relation to whistleblowing. I am hopeful that the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister knows that during the passage of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, I was promised a meeting with him about whistleblowers; I look forward to that. Is he aware that current legislation dealing with whistleblowers directs them to seek an employment tribunal, but that there are 47,000 employment tribunal cases waiting to be heard? We have to do something about whistleblowing, and we have to ensure that protections are in place. I look forward to meeting him with a number of my colleagues, so that we can discuss the matter in detail and in full.
Darren Jones
As I have said to the hon. Lady’s Liberal Democrat colleagues, I am happy to receive further representations on reform of the law relating to whistleblowers. If we need to go further, we will be happy to consider doing that.
Draft Infected Blood Compensation Scheme (Amendment) Regulations 2025
Tessa Munt Excerpts(11 months, 1 week ago)
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Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
The Minister will probably anticipate what I am about to ask him. It has been a long wait for a number of families, some of whom are in my constituency, so I am pleased to see that we now have an effective and speedier compensation scheme. That will be hugely welcomed by the families. I recognise that the five recommendations the Committee is discussing represent real progress, and I am very pleased to see it.
I have had a bit of back and forth with the Minister trying to sort out a date to discuss a particular group. Could he update me on the 916 victims eligible for the special category mechanism? I am unclear about where they fall in the grand scheme. All I know is that they were, for some reason, completely excluded, and they should not have been. They should have been included in the reports and the progress that was made last August—a year ago. I would like some clarity on that, if possible, but generally I am massively supportive of what is happening here.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I thank both the shadow Minister and the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for their tone and their constructive approach. They quite rightly hold me to account on the compensation scheme, but, just as it was when I was shadow to the Paymaster General, it is important that we maintain cross-party consensus on this issue; I know it is very important to the victims that this does not descend into being some sort of political football. It never has done so, to be fair, and that is extremely helpful.
On the shadow Minister’s specific questions, I expect the first payment to be made to an affected person by the end of the calendar year, which is what I have consistently said over the past 18 months. On the issue of the start date, when giving evidence before Sir Brian back in May, I promised to go back and look at it again. The Government of the day was from 1979 a Conservative one, though that does not really matter; there was an argument as to the date after which liability should fall, but I decided that such a debate was not becoming, and that we should just remove the start date altogether, which is precisely what I have done.
I also entirely agree with the shadow Minister’s point about record keeping. It is not just that these events happened a long time ago, which they did; Sir Brian found evidence of deliberate document destruction. In those circumstances, while Members will realise that IBCA is operationally independent, I have always insisted that there should be a sympathetic and facilitating approach to evidence when dealing with claimants. Rather than simply saying that particular evidence is not available, it should be constructively looking for alternative ways to find that evidence. When I visited IBCA to see the training and work of its caseworkers, both the chair and the chief executive of the organisation very much shared that approach.
The heinous medical experimentation that happened, including at times on children, is also part of the consultation, and we are currently in the 12-week consultation period. Finally, I entirely agree with the shadow Minister that there must be regular communication from both the Government, through the consultation, and IBCA. There must also be plain English in official documents—that is one my passions and I repeatedly asking for it.
The Liberal Democrat spokesperson raised the special category mechanism, the changes to which are in the public consultation at the moment. After the 12-week consultation period, the Government will have 12 weeks to respond. My plan is then to introduce what will be the full set of regulations, so another Committee will be reconvening as soon as possible to make the necessary changes to the scheme on the basis of that consultation.
Tessa Munt
Is it possible to have some vague timeframe? The Minister is saying that there is a 12-week consultation, which I absolutely understand, but so many of these people are desperately ill. Can he give me any idea of when that might come into action?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
It has already started; we are in the first 12-week period. After that, the Government then have another 12 weeks to respond, at which point I will bring forward a set of regulations. I have already committed to Sir Brian Langstaff, and on the Floor of the House, to changing the special category mechanism. I am fully aware of the issue the hon. Lady has highlighted, and we will certainly move as quickly as we can to introduce the regulations. There is the 12-week consultation period that we are in, there will be 12 weeks for the Government to respond, and then there will be the time that it takes to draft and introduce regulations, but I want to do that as quickly as possible.
Finally, while we are here debating Sir Brian Langstaff’s important recommendations on compensation, he also made a range of other recommendations on trying to prevent something as awful as this from happening again. While this work is hugely important, the work on implementing the other recommendations continues.
Question put and agreed to.