Ministerial Code/Register of Ministers’ Interests

(Urgent Question): To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office if he will make a statement on enforcement of the ministerial code and the publication of the register of Ministers’ interests.

May I start by congratulating the right hon. Lady on her multiple new roles? I apologise for the fact that she has to put up with me for her debut. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is unable to be here, but I know that he is looking forward to working with her.

On 28 April, the Prime Minister appointed the right hon. Lord Geidt, former private secretary to Her Majesty the Queen, to the position of independent adviser on Ministers’ interests. In taking up the appointment, he agreed revised terms of reference for the role, which strengthen its independence. One of his core tasks is to oversee the preparation of the list of Ministers’ interests. In giving evidence to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee last Thursday, he confirmed that it was his intention to publish the updated list on Ministers’ interests by the end of this month.

The ministerial code is clear: there must be no misuse of taxpayers’ money, nor actual or perceived conflicts of interest, but time and again Ministers act like the rules are for other people—none more so than the Prime Minister himself. Last year, he declared £15,000 from a Tory donor for his sleazy jet trip to a private island. This weekend, we read that the real cost was double that, and paid by someone else entirely.

People might ask, “Why is this important?” It is important because it goes to the very heart of our democracy. Who do our Government answer to: the public, or private interests? We learned only from the media that the Prime Minister has blocked the publication of the independent commissioner’s report. Can the Minister tell us why the delay? Does she accept that the rules apply to everyone, even the Prime Minister, and will he accept—

Order. This case is with Standards, and really we ought to keep away from it until Standards has been able to deal with it.

Okay. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

The list of Ministers’ interests is also mysteriously delayed, I assume while the Prime Minister tries to remember who paid for his flat, but does the Minister accept that if the Prime Minister can block the independent adviser from investigating he cannot in practice be fully independent, because the code clearly is not preventing actual or perceived conflicts of interests?

When the Home Secretary lobbies on behalf of a former adviser flogging substandard face masks, who lands a £100 million contract without tender and at double the going rate, who cannot perceive that as a conflict of interest? It is something that we know not from the Home Secretary declaring it, but because it was revealed in an admin error. Then there is the Health Secretary, who appears to have ordered an official to recommend a bid that he had not even read from a former Tory MP, who pocketed another £200 million of taxpayers’ cash. Surely the independent adviser must investigate those cases with no prime ministerial veto.

Finally, there is the Prime Minister’s own top adviser, Lord Lister. He concealed being paid by a luxury developer owned by yet another Tory donor, which was granted a record-breaking taxpayer-backed loan by the very public body that Lister chaired—money that was meant for affordable homes, but given out at mates’ rates for luxury flats and private profit. Will the Government release the loan agreement, along with the correspondence on that decision, and hand it to the independent investigator, and when will they publish their report on officials’ second jobs? When Ministers and advisers use the public purse as a personal cashpoint, the public have a right to know.

Order. Before we start, the supplementary was meant to be two minutes. I did interrupt, so I allowed some leeway. I will therefore also allow some leeway for the reply. When we mention Members of the other place, it is meant to be on a substantive motion. I know that seems strange, but these are the rules of the House, which I do not make; the House has made them and adopted them. We must stick to the rules. We do not criticise individual Members of the other House except on a substantive motion.

The right hon. Lady raises issues about the ministerial code, the arbiter of which is the Prime Minister; the work of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which is a matter for that Committee; and the role of the independent adviser. She also touches on various reviews that are taking place and matters for the House authorities. As you pointed out, Mr Speaker, these are not things it would be appropriate for me to pontificate on, but I will try to answer the general thrust of the accusations the right hon. Lady makes today, and I shall speak frankly, because I know she appreciates that.

The charge the right hon. Lady makes is that the people she names are somehow on the take. That is the charge she is making here today on the Floor of the House: that they have not been focused over the past 16 months on working their socks off to save lives, to get a vaccination programme up and running and to do the things that the public need us to do, but that they have, unbelievably, entered into politics, made sacrifices and overcome the obstacles that she will be aware of to get into this place not to serve in public life but to do a mate—more accurately, a Tory mate—or someone they vaguely know, or met in a lift once, or perhaps do not know at all, a favour. That is the accusation that she is making today. I am afraid that that is why the Labour line of attack is not getting traction, well rehearsed though it is. It is not getting traction with the public because it is not plausible. It is based not on fact but on speculation, innuendo and smear.

Perceived conflicts of interest are not those that the right hon. Lady has made up. The public care about scrutiny—they do. They care about accountability, transparency and standards in public life. What they see through though is the performance she has given today, which is designed to smear decent colleagues and denigrate British business. I would direct the right hon. Lady to the National Audit Office report, which refutes the accusations she has made about MPs, civil servants, business and members of the public—but I am sure she already knows that. I would suggest to her that an Essex MP is perfectly entitled to forward an offer from the Essex chamber of commerce to help in a pandemic. MPs do it all the time—it is part of our job—but the right hon. Lady already knows this, too, and so does everyone else. The urgent question today has more to do with Labour’s internal politics and divisions than the conduct of Members of this House and enterprises that have been working to help the NHS and to save lives.

The role of the independent adviser is an important one, and I personally was impressed by Lord Geidt’s evidence to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee last week. Ostensibly, the delay in the publication of the register of Ministers’ interests was due to the vacancy in that important position that arose after the resignation of Sir Alex Allan. What does my right hon. Friend suggest be done should such a vacancy arise again, so that the register is not delayed in the future?

My hon. Friend makes some very good points. He knows, because I have appeared before his Committee regarding this and other matters, that there have been delays to certain things, in part because of what the Government have had to deal with over the past 16 months, but those appointments are in train now. As he also knows from the evidence his Committee took, the register is due to be published very soon. I am sure that things will be on a much more stable footing as, hopefully, we come out of the pandemic.

Annex B of the ministerial code says it is

“important that when a former Minister takes up a particular appointment or employment, there should be no cause for any suspicion of impropriety.”

Given that David Cameron worked as an adviser for Greensill Capital and is reported to have share options worth tens of millions of pounds, do the 57 messages to senior officials that we are aware of regarding Greensill Capital give any cause for suspicion of impropriety? Will that be investigated by the independent adviser? One of those messages to a senior civil servant said the decision

“seems bonkers. Am now calling CX,”—

the Chancellor of the Exchequer—

“Gove, everyone.”

Is that acceptable? Does that give cause for concern about impropriety and will that be investigated? When the Minister is on her feet, can she tell us what action, when the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster got the call, did he take on behalf of his old boss?

As I said in my opening response to the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), these issues are being looked at—there are reviews in train—and it would not be appropriate for me to comment on those until they have reported. However, I think all Members of this House will want things looked at. They will want to ensure that we get to the bottom of these issues, and I hope, too, that we will look at the wider issues around the Gupta Family Group and the role of the SNP in those matters.

I welcome the appointment of Lord Geidt and also the modest increase in the terms of reference to increase his independence. Do my right hon. Friends accept that it is possible still for us to go a little further to increase the degree of independence of Lord Geidt and his successors, and that it is not too late to add the extra levels of independence that have been suggested by Lord Evans and, among others, me to make sure that the role has extra credibility, without necessarily giving way to some of the extraordinary allegations that seem to prejudge some of the important work being done by independent or cross-party reviews already under way in this important area?

May I take this opportunity to thank my hon. Friend for the work he has done on these and related matters? It is very helpful when colleagues make positive suggestions. My understanding is that a response has been sent to Lord Evans, but we are keeping all things under review. We clearly want to ensure that we arrive at a situation where we can have the greatest possible transparency and ensure that we retain the trust of the public.

Accepting everything that the Minister says about the probity of her colleagues, does she not think that it would be in their interests for their names and their reputations to be cleared by a system that is wholly independent of the Prime Minister? Complaints against Ministers could be investigated, those investigations would be instigated by someone independent of Government, and thereafter their conclusions would be published. Surely that would be good for her colleagues.

I think I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that it is in those colleagues’ interests that there is credibility and weight to any investigations. The difficulty is that we have this peculiar and unique relationship between Ministers and the Prime Minister—they are not employees; they are in a particular category—and therefore we have a situation where the Prime Minister is the arbiter and is responsible for the ministerial code. What we are doing in all of these processes is trying to arrive at the condition that the right hon. Gentleman describes, but still stay within the boundaries of what is legal and what is correct.

Thanks to the efforts of this Government at the beginning of the pandemic, at no point did Blackpool Victoria Hospital or other local organisations such as Blackpool Council run out of PPE, despite the obvious global shortages. The public would rightly expect Ministers to do everything within their power to source PPE to keep people safe, so does my right hon. Friend agree with me that the actions taken by this Government were both proportionate and necessary, given the circumstances?