Speeches by Chope.

“You do not label them?”

“When do you expect decisions to be made on the Jackdaw field, for example?”

“These are transferable skills that can be used in Aberdeen or elsewhere in the UK or overseas?”

“The reason I ask is because Neil Cowie, the principal of your college, told the Scottish Affairs Committee that he is concerned that the courses aimed at oil and gas were not being taken up with such enthusiasm by students, so implying that there were courses aimed at oil and gas. Do no such courses exist?”

“What proportion of your students would be from Scotland or the UK compared with from overseas?”

“Roughly? Are we talking half and half?”

“When you are discussing educational establishments, do you think there will come a time when oil and gas is no longer a feature in the curriculum?”

“When do you expect decisions to be made on the Jackdaw field, for example?”

“The Minister has referred to the grooming gangs inquiry carried out by our friend, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe), and early-day motion 380 makes a number of recommendations. Will the Minister engage with the hon. Member to ensure that his ideas and recommendations can be taken forward, because we do …”

“The landmark 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence by the United States takes place in the week commencing 29 June. I have applied for an Adjournment debate, but will the Leader of the House enable more Members to be able to participate in marking that historic event?”

“Just one final question: can you assure us that you as a Minister, when you answer a parliamentary question, have read the question, read the answer and physically approved it yourself, rather than delegated that to a spad?”

“But special advisers are not civil servants; they are political appointees. What I am saying is: why can’t you rely on the civil servants to produce an answer and then you, as the Minister, look at it and see whether it is properly drafted and reflects your policy? If you did away with the special advisers—you have sai…”

“In that case, why aren’t the questions coming directly from officials to Ministers?”

“Would it be unfair to characterise what you are saying as that, essentially, Ministers are delegating to their special advisers the role that they as Ministers should have, in a lot of the policymaking?”

“Do you ever overrule the spad? Or does the spad tell you if he or she has rejected that question on your behalf and had it redrafted? I want to get a handle on it somehow.”

“Yes, so you are ducking out of working as hard as you could.”

“Drilling into that, what do you mean they would be out of action for a considerable amount of time? All you mean is that they would have more stuff in their red box overnight and they would have to work a bit harder.”

“One of the issues that caused a lot of the questions was that, because the policy was being developed, nobody knew the details of it. One of the problems that you will have in the next six or nine months is what exactly is involved in the social media ban. It seems to have been produced a bit off the hoof, so isn’t tha…”

“In answer to that: no, I did not, because I was the junior Minister for the poll tax, or community charge. I think I probably had more questions than any Minister in the Government at that time.”

“Going back a few years, when I was a Minister, we did not have spads, so the Ministers took responsibility. Would it not improve the process, the timeliness and the accuracy if spads were not in the way? The Ministers decide the policy, they look at the answer that has been drafted by officials, and if they see an issu…”