Speeches by Twigg.

“Because of the number of Members who have indicated that they wish to speak in the debate, with the authority of the Chairman of Ways and Means, I am imposing a time limit on Back Benchers’ contributions of two and a half minutes.”

“This will be a short intervention, I am sure.”

“Was that October or November? There was a HEA meeting—”

“But there is no evidence that they knew before then.”

“You feel from what you knew and what the judge said that the risk had changed, but the Government did not feel that the risk had changed.”

“Are you suggesting that the sensitivity around small boats, asylum and people coming to this country illegally coloured the Government’s view about how they would handle this?”

“Okay. My final question is slightly different. We are looking at the way the MoD works. On the timescale, what do you know—that is not already in the public domain—about when senior people or Ministers were informed that the breach had happened and there had been a mistake?”

“I am talking about Ministers.”

“Do you think that, from the previous Government to this Government, the issue about misleading Parliament and Parliament being kept in the dark was never the main consideration in this?”

“Right. It is a bit, also, “new Ministers being caught in headlights” type of thing—“What is going on here?””

“That goes back to the original question. Was that a part of the narrative—the worry about the issue of immigration?”

“You would have thought that a new Government comes in, in July, and there is an opportunity. Why do you think they didn’t take it then?”

“But then in October they decided to change the tactics, in terms of having a narrative rather than keeping it secret.”

“It could be convenience at any point in time, even now that it has come out.”

“Sorry—obviously, you know more of the detail than we do. At that point in 2024, given what you have said that the judge said, why would the Government then continue with it? What was the purpose for them to do that, if you believe that there was an opportunity at that point to say, “This is what happened”?”

“Keeping this in the scope of misleading Parliament and what you have said so far—we will not go into the Rimmer review; other colleagues will come on to that—I think you said early on that they had the original injunction in place and you understood why that was in place. At what point do you think they should have lif…”

“I remind hon. Members that they may make a speech only with prior permission from the Member in charge of the debate and from the Minister. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.”

“Will the Minister please leave a minute or two for the hon. Member who secured the debate to wind up?”

“A final point: is the Government doing enough to attract private capital into pillar 2? That builds on the point you were just making.”

“Would you agree with your two colleagues that it is again to the advantage of the Chinese if there is slow progress on this?”