William Cash
Main Page: William Cash (Conservative - Stone)Department Debates - View all William Cash's debates with the Cabinet Office
(1 year, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent 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.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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The anti-corruption strategy is run by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Security; I know he works actively on that, and an anti-corruption champion will be appointed in due course. With deference to the hon. Lady’s position, I think that is a very different scenario from what we are talking about today. For a start, we are talking about the civil service code, not the ministerial code. However, I agree that we always need to support and not undermine the impartiality and the perceived impartiality of the civil service. That applies to all of us, including the Leader of the Opposition.
Is my right hon. Friend aware whether a contract, written or unwritten, has been entered into between the parties concerned? This important question asked by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) raises questions not only of constitutional propriety and impartiality, but of confidentiality between the persons concerned. Furthermore, I would like to know whether there is any question of any involvement of taxpayers’ money in these arrangements, as part of the Short money that will be involved in the office of the Leader of the Opposition.
As my hon. Friend will appreciate, I am in no position to know whether there is a contract, either oral or written, between Sue Gray and the Labour party. Nor am I in any position to judge how her putative post, if it were to go through, would be funded. Those are both questions that can only be answered by those on the Opposition side of the House, and it would be in the interest of transparency and clarity if they were to be cleared up, along with a timeline of events on when the meetings started, who took part and where they took place.