Ministerial Code

(Urgent Question): To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office to update the House on the ministerial code.

The ministerial code is the responsibility of the Prime Minister of the day. It is customarily updated and issued upon their assuming or returning to office. The code sets out the behaviour expected of all those who serve in government. It provides guidance to Ministers on how they should act and arrange their affairs to uphold those standards. The code exists and should be read alongside the overarching duty on Ministers to comply with the law and to protect the integrity of public life.

The current version of the code was issued by the Prime Minister in August 2019 shortly after he assumed office. While the code sets out standards and offers guidance, it is Ministers who are personally responsible for deciding how to act and conduct themselves in light of the code, and, of course, for justifying their actions and conduct to Parliament and to the public. That is as it should be in a robust democracy such as ours. Ministers are not employees of the Government, but rather office holders who hold their office for as long as they have the confidence of the Prime Minister as the Head of Government. It is always, therefore, the Prime Minister who is the ultimate judge of the standards of behaviour expected of an individual Minister and of the appropriate consequences were a breach of those standards to occur.

The code also sets out a role for an independent adviser on Ministers’ interests. It is an important role, the principal duty of which is to provide independent advice to Ministers on the arrangement of their private interests. The independent adviser also has a role in investigating alleged breaches of the ministerial code. As the House will be aware, Sir Alex Allan stepped down from his role towards the end of last year. Following the practice of successive Administrations, the Prime Minister will appoint a successor to Sir Alex. The House will understand that the process of identifying the right candidate for such a role can take time. However, an appointment is expected to be announced shortly. The House will be informed in the usual way as soon as that appointment is confirmed. It will clearly be an early priority for the new independent adviser to oversee the publication of an updated list of Ministers’ interests. I expect that will be published shortly after a new independent adviser is appointed.

I can, of course, reassure the House that the process of managing Ministers’ interests has continued in the absence of an independent adviser, in line with the ministerial code, which sets out that the permanent secretary in each Department and the Cabinet Office overall have a role. Ministers remain able to seek advice on their interests from their permanent secretary and from the Cabinet Office. The ministerial code has served successive Administrations well and has been an important tool in upholding standards in public life. It will continue to do so.

Let us go to the SNP spokesperson for the urgent question. I call Alison Thewliss. [Interruption.] Order. Can I just say to Members that they should be wearing a mask in the Chamber? For the two Members sat there: please, it is not my decision, but the decision of Public Health England that we should be wearing masks. If you do not wish to, please leave the Chamber.

Thank you, Mr Speaker—[Interruption.]

Order. We will have to suspend the sitting if Members do not wear their masks. That is not on my order, but Public Health England’s.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question.

In his foreword to the “Ministerial Code”, the Prime Minister says:

“To…win back the trust of the British people, we must uphold the very highest standards of propriety…No misuse of taxpayer money and no actual or perceived conflicts of interest. The precious principles of public life enshrined in this document—integrity, objectivity, accountability, transparency, honesty and leadership in the public interest—must be honoured at all times”.

Well, this UK Tory Government is failing on all counts. They are riddled with conflicts of interest and allegations of corruption. Indeed, 37% of the public think the Prime Minister is corrupt—53% think that in Scotland—and that is before getting into the latest on what the Prime Minister is alleged to have said, which is that he would rather see bodies pile up in their thousands than order a third lockdown. Despicable, cruel and callous. Comments not befitting the office of Prime Minister.

Transparency International’s “Track and Trace” report raised serious questions on 73 Government contracts worth £3.7 billion. Of those, 24 personal protective equipment contracts, worth £1.6 billion, were handed to those with known political connections, with a further £536 million on testing services. We need to know who has benefited and what their links are to Ministers, especially in the light of the VIP lane that the National Audit Office identified as a risk. People on that list were 10 times more likely to win a contract. Transparency International identified the VIP lane as potentially a

“systemic and partisan bias in the award of PPE contracts.”

Will the Minister stop hiding behind commercial confidentiality and publish in full the details of those VIP contracts, along with who recommended them? It is our money and we have a right to know. Will he also finally publish the updated register of Ministers’ interests?

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising a number of issues. She raised the whole question of procurement of PPE. It is a well attested fact that less than 0.5% of the PPE procured did not meet the standards that we had set out. It is a fact that every single recommendation for the procurement of PPE went through an independent eight-stage process verified by independent civil servants. It is the case that the Government, operating at a time when the pandemic was raging, did everything possible—we make no apology for it—to ensure that those at the frontline got the equipment that they deserved. The techniques that we used and the processes that we followed not only stand up to scrutiny; the same techniques and the same processes were used by the Welsh Government, the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive.

The hon. Lady raises the Greensill question. Of course, the truth is that all the efforts on behalf of that company in order to push the Treasury and others were rejected. She raises the issue of Sir James Dyson. She does not acknowledge the fact that Sir James spent millions of pounds of his own money to try to ensure that we had ventilators to save those on the frontline. She does not mention that the ventilator challenge was investigated by the Public Accounts Committee, which said it was a model of public procurement. She does not mention the fact that the changes to the Prime Minister’s flat were paid for by the Prime Minister himself, and she repeats a line from a newspaper but ignores the fact that the Prime Minister instituted not only a second but a third lockdown to keep us safe.

What the hon. Lady does not mention is that she and other Opposition Members criticised the appointment of a vaccine tsar as cronyism when Kate Bingham has been responsible for saving millions of lives. What she does not say is that Opposition MPs criticised Kate Bingham for spending money on public relations when that money was there to ensure that people from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds were able to get the vaccines they required. What she does not acknowledge is the determined effort by public servants in this Government and others to deal with a pandemic and to save lives. Instead, she tries to score political points in a way that, sadly, causes regret.

I commend a great deal of what my right hon. Friend just said, but let us face it: there is not a great deal of public confidence in propriety and ethics in politics in this country, and that is to be laid at the door of all political parties over a long period. What would begin to restore public confidence in such matters is more genuine discussion of principles and values and how conflicts of interests should be better managed, and to have rather less quibbling about whether we are inside or outside certain rules. I feel that accusations should perhaps be less blaming as well.

I commend to my right hon. Friend the letter sent by the chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life to the Prime Minister last week. It recommended a number of changes to the role—that the chair should be able to initiate his or her own inquiries and to publish a summary of the findings—that the

“Prime Minister should retain the right to decide on any sanction following a breach of the Code”

and that it is “disproportionate” for the Prime Minister always to require a resignation for a breach of the code. The Prime Minister should be able to use a range of sanctions to deal with breaches of the code. Will the Government accept those recommendations?

My hon. Friend makes a characteristically thoughtful series of points. As a former Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee and as a current leading Select Committee Chairman in this House, the points that he makes are certainly ones that we should reflect on. It is the case that the process of holding Ministers and others to account is always an evolutionary one. We should look at thoughtful recommendations such as those made by Lord Evans and others and we should consider what more can be done. It is important to stress, however, that the Government have already introduced a series of changes in order to ensure greater transparency in public life. Of course, we always seek to do better.

Mr Speaker:

“There must be no bullying and no harassment; no leaking…No misuse of taxpayer money and no actual or perceived conflicts of interest.”

Those words are from the Prime Minister’s foreword to the ministerial code. I do not know whether he believed them when he wrote them, but he is certainly trampling all over them today. The Prime Minister is now corrupting the standards of public life expected in high office as he dodges questions and tries to cover up payments for the luxury refurbishment of his flat, feathering his own nest and possibly breaking the law through undeclared loans.

As for leaks, we are seeing the pipes burst with the sewage of allegations. People say that a fish rots from the head down. There is a reason why there is no independent adviser on ministerial standards and why the Government will not publish the long-overdue list of Ministers’ interests. The reason is that the Prime Minister has not wanted them. This is a Prime Minister who would rather the bodies “pile high” than act on scientific advice, but they are not bodies; they are people, they are loved ones and they are deeply missed.

I ask the Minister to engage with the issues at hand. When will the Government publish that register of Ministers’ financial interests? Who paid the invoices for the Prime Minister’s flat refurbishment in the first place and when were those funds repaid? When will the review by the Cabinet Secretary of this fiasco be complete? When will the vacancy for the independent adviser on ministerial standards be filled, and will the Government give that adviser the powers to trigger independent investigations, as the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) has just said and as recommended by Lord Evans?

Finally, will the Minister apologise for the stomach-churning comments that have come out today and announce an urgent public inquiry into the Government’s handling of the pandemic? This is all about conduct, character and decency. Frankly, our country deserves an awful lot better than this.

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her questions. As ever, she raises a number of significant issues. On the question of the No. 10 Downing Street refurbishment, it is important to stress that previous Prime Ministers have used taxpayers’ money in order to refurbish No. 10 Downing Street. In 1998-99, in real terms, the then Prime Minister spent £73,000 of taxpayers’ money on refurbishing Downing Street; in 2000-01, £55,000; and, again, in 2007-08, £35,000—all taxpayers’ money. This Prime Minister has spent his own money on refurbishing Downing Street. That is a distinction to which the hon. Lady should pay close attention.

The hon. Lady also suggested that the Government did not act on scientific advice in dealing with the pandemic. I hope that she will reflect on those words and recognise that that is completely wrong. This Government, as I pointed out, initiated not just a second but a third lockdown in response to medical and scientific advice, and this Government, working with doctors and scientists, have ensured that we have had the fastest vaccine roll-out in Europe. We have also developed many of the therapeutics and tools necessary to ensure that those who are suffering and in pain at last receive relief. Of course, the ventilators that this Government took part in procuring are now helping to save lives in India.

The hon. Lady is right to say that we should appoint an independent adviser on ministerial interests as soon as possible, but as I mentioned in my statement, that appointment is due within days and that independent adviser will have the freedom to carry out their role in exactly the way that they should. Scrutiny is always welcome, but it is also the case, as the hon. Lady should recognise, that scrutiny should extend beyond those who are our political opponents to the parties that we ourselves lead or are members of. I can only quote from The Times at the weekend, one of whose columnists wrote:

May I pick up on the excellent point made by my hon. Friend the Chairman of the Liaison Committee about the powers of the next occupant of the position of the Prime Minister’s adviser on the ministerial code and encourage my right hon. Friend to go down that road? The proposals made by the chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life exactly match ones that I made to that committee about a month and a half ago. It strikes me that we have now reached the point where we must strengthen the entire system so that it commands cross-party confidence and trust, and these proposals will be very welcome and widely appreciated on all sides if this is a step that we could ultimately take.

My hon. Friend makes a very important point, and the work he has done to increase standards in public life has been applauded across parties and across this House, and, indeed, outside it. The Government and the new independent adviser on ministerial standards will want to reflect on Lord Evans’s recommendation and other points to make sure that we can have the maximum confidence in our system.

We now come to the SNP spokesperson, Mr Stewart Hosie.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) for securing this important urgent question. We have had PPE contracts awarded to donors and cronies without a robust tender process, NHS contracts awarded to a firm partly owned by the Health Secretary, privileged secret communications between an ex-Prime Minister and the Chancellor, and between James Dyson and the current Prime Minister—and I could add a Tory fondness for oligarchs—and the allegation of Tory donors funding the Prime Minister’s home improvements. There is no point in the Minister’s sitting there, part bombast and part Teflon Don, hoping that the stench of cronyism will simply pass. It is far too late for that. When did this Government judge that integrity, probity, transparency and the ministerial code were obstacles to be overcome rather than principles to always be adhered to?

The right hon. Gentleman is always a skilled and gifted rhetorician, but as I pointed out in response to his colleague, the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), if we look at PPE, we see that the processes by which it has been procured by this Government have been independently validated and assured by officials, with an eight-step process to ensure that contracts were awarded only to those who could provide the right equipment. There is no variance in the approach that this Government took and the approach that the Scottish Government or Welsh Government took in the procurement of PPE.

The right hon. Gentleman talks about a Tory fondness for oligarchs, and refers to text messages and so on. I can only point out that our mutual friend the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Economy and Tourism dined with Mr Lex Greensill and Mr Gupta in one of Glasgow’s finest restaurants. If there is a particular fondness for dining with oligarchs, it is not the preserve of any one individual or party in this House.

As for suggesting that the ministerial code is something to be got round or overlooked and suggesting that propriety might need to be looked at, I would simply refer the right hon. Gentleman to the report of the independent Committee of the Scottish Parliament on the investigation into the former First Minister. If people want to see a story of obstruction, obfuscation, prevarication and a waste of taxpayers’ money, they can find it there.

Constituents are sick and tired of this endless tittle-tattle. They just want their lives to go back normal, which is what this Government are helping them to achieve. They could not care less about the Prime Minister’s cushions or his curtains. When will we have an Opposition who care about the actual priorities and not who the Downing Street decorators are?