William Wragg
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Lobbying of Government Committee
William Wragg Excerpts(3 years ago)
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Rachel Reeves
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The point about Sir Alex Allan is that it is five months later and nobody has been appointed to this role. Whether we advertise the role or not, it has been vacant for five months. [Interruption.] A Member says from a sedentary position that it will happen shortly, but five months is an awfully long time.
I will come on to the issue of the composition of the Select Committee, but like the hon. Gentleman, I had the privilege of chairing a Select Committee. When scandals happened, we looked into them, as we did with the collapse of Carillion, and I know that the hon. Gentleman did so too. The problem is that there is no overarching inquiry planned into not just what happened with Greensill but more widely around lobbying, cronyism and sleaze. I am very happy to work on a cross-party basis to take this forward, and I welcome the comments from the hon. Gentleman over the last couple of days.
As well as the lack of an adviser on ministerial interests, there has been an absence of ministerial interests being published. They are supposed to be published twice a year, but they were published only once last year, in July, and not at all since then. These things matter—they are the foundations on which the standards of government rest, and under this Government, those foundations are being consciously removed. That is why this motion does what the Government should have done but chose not to: it gives the power to this House, not the Government, with a 16-strong Select Committee with clout to investigate this whole sorry scandal. It would have powers to call witnesses and examine them in public, like an effective Select Committee would. The investigation that we propose would look at inappropriate lobbying of Government and what needs to be done to prevent it. It would have the powers needed to demand witnesses and communications. It would examine the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments and whether it has sufficient powers, resources and the right remit. Put simply, this special new Select Committee would aim to tackle the problem staring us in the face, not cover it up.
Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
I note the motion and thank the hon. Member for it. I just wondered why she thought it was appropriate that the membership of that Committee be nominated by the Committee of Selection? Why should it be filled with a load of Whips’ stooges?
Rachel Reeves
I will not comment on how Select Committee Chairs are sometimes elected in this place. But as a former Select Committee Chair, I know how seriously colleagues around this House would take this responsibility, as the hon. Gentleman does. We are prepared to make a concession to Conservative Members. We will accept that this Committee can be chaired by a Back Bencher from the governing party as long as there is cross-party representation on the Committee, as with other Select Committees.
The Conservative party is at a fork in the road. If MPs vote for this motion, a proper investigation can take place, led by a team with the confidence of this House, not someone handpicked from the board of one of the Government Departments embroiled in this scandal. But if they vote against it, as the Prime Minister has told them all to do, I am sorry to say that they too will be part of the Government’s attempt to cover up Tory sleaze. All Members here today should reflect on who they are here to serve: their constituents and their country, or their narrow party interests?
The stakes are high for our democracy and our public life. It was a past Conservative Government—embroiled in sleaze in the 1990s—who eventually recognised the need for standards to rise and to create the Nolan principles. The Nolan principles of public life have to live and breathe through all those in public office serving our great country. Yesterday we learned that the Government’s former head of procurement was an adviser for Greensill while still a civil servant. Incredibly, that was approved. The defence is that it was “not uncommon”. What on earth was happening at the Cabinet Office and at the heart of Government to allow these conflicts of interest to fester? Sir John Major, who witnessed the cash for questions scandal and other Tory sleaze in the ’90s when he was Prime Minister also believes that the rules need to be changed again.
One of the Nolan principles—as you well know, Mr Speaker—is leadership. With that in mind, where is the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster today? Where was the Chancellor of the Exchequer yesterday? What have they got to hide? There is a wider pattern of behaviour with the Conservatives here, in the present as well as in the recent past: a Conservative Government who are more interested in private drinks with the owners of private jets than meeting the families bereaved by covid; a Government who gave a 40% pay rise to Dominic Cummings, but a pay cut to nurses; Tory politicians thinking that it is one rule for them and another for everybody else; personal attention lavished on friends of Cameron, while 3 million people are excluded from Government financial support and cannot even get a meeting with the Treasury.
Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
May I thank the Opposition for tabling a motion to establish a Committee, but gently point out to them that one already exists; namely, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which the House has given me the honour of chairing? I trust that the motion before us is not a vote of no confidence in either me or, indeed, the very independent-minded membership of that Committee.
I can forgive that oversight—momentarily forgetting the existence of that Committee—because, in a week of national mourning, and even on the day of tributes to His late Royal Highness, I did not think it seemly to be prattling about television studios. Nor, for that matter, did I think it was at all seemly for Mr Cameron’s statement to be released at that time. But rest assured that the Committee is and will be giving these matters proper consideration.
Perhaps to labour the point made by the Leader of the Opposition at Prime Minister’s questions—no doubt it will fall similarly flat when I say it—I am more than happy to take up the role of the AC-12 of Whitehall, but the motion proposed this afternoon could be taken from the script of Sunday night’s episode. For the benefit of the tape, I have full confidence in the members of the Committee to discharge their duties and do not require a reorganisation.
The House will note the Committee’s public session tomorrow morning with Lord Pickles, who, as chair of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, will doubtless have a vital contribution to make in illuminating matters. We also intend to have the Cabinet Secretary before the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee within the next fortnight. I ask the House to be assured that we will pursue every possible line of inquiry with our witnesses and shall conduct ourselves without fear or favour.
Without prejudicing these inquiries, I will offer a reflection on the crux of the issue. I wonder whether the attention given to the former Prime Minister, Mr Cameron, is somewhat of a red herring; it is no doubt a tasteless, slapdash and unbecoming episode for any former Prime Minister, but is it the central issue? After all, what is the key attribute of a former Minister or senior official? Surely we are all institutionalised and deskilled by public life; what possibly qualifies a former Minister or senior official? Food for thought.
There are four key areas of questioning ahead. First, the collapse of Greensill Capital has highlighted the shortcomings of the ACOBA rules and their applications. Secondly, does ACOBA’s oversight end completely two years after a former Minister or official has left their post? Thirdly, a senior official appears to have moved from a civil service position to join Greensill without application to ACOBA; is a secondment a technicality or at least a breach of the spirit, or indeed an actual breach, of the rules? Fourthly, Mr Greensill appears to have been a special adviser at 10 Downing Street; as a Spad, he would have fallen within ACOBA’s remit, and if so did he comply with the business appointment rules?
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
The questions my hon. Friend is posing are accommodated within the rules, but what we are talking about here is behaviour, and does he agree that this is about principles, indeed the very Nolan principles, and if everybody involved in public service viewed them as a code of practice for life we could avoid a lot of this?
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I rise briefly to make the point that the 2017 Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee report into the ACOBA rules recommended changes to the ministerial code and the civil service so there would be proper conversations about these conflicts of interest as they arise, which do not take place in the current atmosphere.
Chris Bryant
Of course, the Nolan principles are embodied in the code of conduct that affects all MPs, and all this does is raise the danger of bringing the whole of the House into disrepute, so I very much hope that the hon. Gentleman’s Committee will work with mine, the Committee on Standards, as we are reviewing the code of conduct to make sure that it really does work for the modern era.
Mr Wragg
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention.
Hon. and right hon. Members should always be careful in using the privilege afforded to us in speaking in this House, but I find it odd that the leaked emails should be from the late Cabinet Secretary, which cannot be contextualised or challenged by a man who is dead. We must be mindful of scapegoating, especially when it appears too neat, but neither should we allow conspiracy theories to abound without challenge. In the debate that follows, difficult as it may be, I would ask my hon. and right hon. Friends not to unquestioningly defend the integrity of others if they have doubts or have been asked to do so. Whatever little or imperfect integrity we have ourselves—for we are all fallible—it is the only integrity we can seek to protect.
Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)
This afternoon, we have heard a story of endemic cronyism—cronyism that has persisted for years and spread right across this Conservative Government and previous Conservative-led Governments. Parallels with the Conservative Governments of the 1990s are clear for all to see: jobs for the boys, all over again. Conservative sleaze is back. But as my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle) said, there is a difference this time—a difference in scale. This time, we are talking about hundreds of millions of pounds of public money put at risk, and thousands of jobs.
What is staggering is the complacent and cavalier attitude of those involved, as so many have said today, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby). A former Conservative Prime Minister thought there was nothing wrong with texting the sitting Chancellor and two of his junior Ministers to ask for special treatment for the financial services firm that was paying his wages. A Chancellor thought there was nothing wrong with pushing his team to see whether they could amend a Government loan scheme to give Greensill access to hundreds of millions of pounds of public money. A Treasury and a Business Department thought there was nothing wrong with Greensill being accredited as a lender under one of the Government-backed schemes, even when it had been rejected by another, and this mere months before the firm collapsed altogether. All this took place when the vast majority of public servants, civil servants and, of course, key workers were working with integrity around the clock on the covid effort.
We know that before that, David Cameron thought there was nothing wrong with setting up Lex Greensill in the heart of Government, with a desk, business cards and his own No. 10 email address, and nothing wrong with giving him access to contracts worth billions of pounds. Indeed, a contract was lined up for Greensill to provide supply chain financing across the public sector, and it was pulled only a few days ago, when this scandal started to break.
Similarly, the Health Secretary thought there was nothing wrong with meeting the former Prime Minister for a drink with Lex Greensill to discuss how their firm could get access to NHS staff pay, packaging up loans as bonds to be sold to investors and trading on the good name of our NHS.
The Government’s former head of procurement thought there was nothing wrong with becoming an adviser to Greensill Capital while he was still a civil servant. I have never before heard of someone using the revolving door before they have even left the building. Ministers cannot wash their hands of that behaviour and say, “It was the civil service; it is nothing to do with us.” As my hon. Friends the Members for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) and for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) made clear, successive Conservative-led Governments have set the tone and the culture that allowed the behaviour we have heard about today—an approach to public office whereby the accountability and transparency that we should all expect have been replaced by a tap on the shoulder here, a nudge and a wink there.
We need a thorough and genuinely independent investigation to get to the bottom of this, one that can take evidence, call witnesses and report publicly. Instead, as we have heard, the Conservatives propose an inquiry run by the son of a former Conservative Cabinet Minister who works for the law firm that advised the Treasury on the design of the loan scheme that David Cameron lobbied for Greensill to access.
As we know, the Chancellor continues to run scared. He has not been seen in the House since the day after Greensill collapsed. Yesterday, we called for him to come to Parliament, but the Chancellor was frit. He seems to have forgotten his enthusiastic communications about his loan schemes. Indeed, at one point he tweeted proudly about CLBILS—the coronavirus large business interruption loan scheme—with the hashtag #AskRishi. We would love to ask Rishi, but we would have to find him first.
In offering excuses for his absence, the Chancellor claims that neither he nor his Department had any oversight—any role whatever—in deciding who got access to the public lending schemes he announced. He must be the first Chancellor in history to go on the record as having no idea about who was getting access to hundreds of millions of pounds of public money and how they were obtaining it. He promised to level with the public, but I did not think that meant the Chancellor telling the public he did not have a clue what was happening with their money.
As the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution said earlier—it was very good to see her via video link—the use of public money is overseen by the Treasury.
Public money is not the Chancellor’s money, and it is not the Conservatives’ money: it is public money, and it should only ever be used in the public interest. It is simply not good enough for this Government to mark their own homework and hide from scrutiny, as my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) has just said.
Mr Wragg
On the point about scrutiny, and following the speech made by the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins), who is indeed a member of the Committee that will be scrutinising all of these matters—of which it is my privilege to be Chair—I wonder if the hon. Lady could seek not to correct the record, but to explain? If she is seeking independence of scrutiny, the motion before us and on which we will vote is deficient, because in paragraph (3) it asks that the members of that Committee be nominated by the Committee of Selection, which is entirely in the control of the party Whips.
Anneliese Dodds
My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) very ably answered that point earlier: she made very clear the basis upon which our demands are being made. I will be very open with the hon. Gentleman—for whom I have considerable respect—that as so many Members have said this afternoon, it is important for all of us that we clear this matter up and are able to call witnesses, including former Prime Ministers where necessary; that we can do so publicly; and that we can do so about the range of matters that this affair raises. I regret to say that the investigation that has been created by Government simply does not do that. That is why we are calling for the approach set out in today’s motion.
Anneliese Dodds
No, I will proceed with my remarks. The people of this country deserve answers, and they deserve to be treated fairly. That is a point that many of my hon. Friends have made very ably: the Members for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), for Ilford South (Sam Tarry), for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), and for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders).
Last year, I was contacted by someone I will call Jessica; I am sure that Members on the Government Benches will have been contacted by many people like her. Before this crisis, Jessica had a modest income, but it was a reliable income. She worked as a self-employed tour guide and in short-term, part-time roles. When the crisis hit, she lost all her income, but she did not quality for any of the Government’s support schemes, and as an owner-occupier, she was knocked out of most support from social security as well. She was angry, upset, and worried about how she as a single parent could support her family. Obviously, as we all know as constituency MPs, Jessica was not alone. The campaign group ExcludedUK suggests that there were up to 3 million people like Jessica: people who simply could not understand why the Government refused to fix support schemes so that they could get help. People like Jessica did not have the Chancellor’s phone number. Last year, Greensill got 10 meetings with Treasury officials; the group representing the excluded got one meeting.
Most of the excluded are still waiting for help, and our country is still waiting for a strategy to support those jobs put at risk by the collapse of Greensill. Indeed, our country has lacked a strategy for steel for 10 years. Last week, I visited the Liberty Steel plant in Hartlepool. I was incredibly impressed by the world-class technology and operation there; by the dedication of the workforce; and, in particular, by the enthusiasm and commitment of the two apprentices I met. Their work is good, decent work, manufacturing materials that British businesses need. It is a world away from the kind of complicated financial structures and share options that seem to have been par for the course for Lex Greensill and David Cameron, but jobs are at risk because of Greensill’s collapse and because of that lack of any strategy for the future of UK steel, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) made clear.
To conclude, those steelworkers deserve better, and so do the British public. Government Members know that; they know that their constituents are appalled by new evidence of cronyism and the sleaze that seems to be emerging every day under the Conservatives. As the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) said, Members should question why they are being asked to defend these events. They should consider the impact that this will have on their integrity. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) spoke of loyalty. Loyalty must be to the public interest, not to partisan friends, a point ably made by my hon. Friends the Members for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) and for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake). Government Members should, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) said, show some backbone. They should vote today for a full, transparent, Parliament-led inquiry to get to the bottom of this scandal once and for all.