Papers Relating to the Home Secretary

Some Members may have noted that the motion on the Order Paper is for an order, rather than for a Humble Address. As “Erskine May” says, the formula used simply depends on whether the motion is directed at a Department headed by a Secretary of State. A Humble Address may also be appropriate for matters closely connected to the prerogatives of the Crown, but in practical terms there is no difference between an order and a Humble Address.

I beg to move,

That, given the exceptional security concerns raised regarding the Rt Hon Member for Fareham serving as Secretary of State for the Home Department, this House:

(1) orders that there be laid before this House, within ten sitting days, a return of the following papers:

(a) any risk assessment of the Rt Hon Member for Fareham by the Cabinet Office or the Prime Minister’s Office relating to her appointment

(b) any document held by the Cabinet Office, the Home Office or the Prime Minister’s Office containing or related to

(i) any security breaches by the Rt Hon Member for Fareham

(ii) any leak inquiries regarding the Rt Hon Member for Fareham, including during her time as Home Secretary and Attorney General

(c) the minutes of, submissions relevant to and electronic communications relating to, any meeting within the Cabinet Office or the Prime Minister’s Office at which the appointment of the Rt Hon Member for Fareham, or advice relating to that appointment, was discussed in a form which may contain redactions, but such redactions shall be solely for the purposes of national security; and

(2) recommends that where material is laid before the House in a redacted form, the Government should at the same time provide unredacted copies of such material to the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament.

It is 15 days since the Prime Minister appointed his new Cabinet, and 14 days since it was reported that he had been advised not to reappoint certain Ministers, including the Home Secretary and, it was rumoured, the Minister without Portfolio, the right hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson), to their posts on the grounds of standards and of security. Fourteen days in which it has been reported that the Home Secretary breached Home Office security arrangements not just once but seven times; that she may have also broken insider trading rules; that as Attorney General she was investigated several times by leak inquiries; that she ignored legal advice on Manston, contrary to her statement to Parliament; and that she failed to take the action needed to solve the dangerous overcrowding at Manston, leaving her successor and predecessor to pick up the pieces, and that she may well have run up a huge legal liability for the taxpayer as a result, breaching the ministerial code again in the process.

It has also been reported that the Minister with Portfolio sent abusive texts to the then Government Chief Whip, that the Prime Minister was told about this and knew the former Chief Whip had put in a formal complaint, and that there are other complaints against the Minister without Portfolio including, most seriously, words used towards a civil servant about slitting his throat or jumping out of windows—words that it is reported the Minister with Portfolio has not denied using.

I have had letters from upset civil servants who have seen colleagues make lesser misdemeanours and lose their jobs, yet seen the Home Secretary, the woman in charge of national security, hold on to hers. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this shows that there is one rule for the Home Secretary and one rule for everybody else?