Speeches by Lewell.

“That is what I was driving at. Ministers will rightly apologise for things and be held to account, but who else was accountable for this? Have they been held to account for what happened here?”

“Do you think the right people have been held accountable for the data breach and its consequences?”

“Sorry to interrupt, but the Chair is conscious of time. In any organisation, if you make an error on this scale and are not held to account, you are likely to make it again.”

“Why?”

“It is a bit like becoming an MP.”

“Going back to your exchange with my colleague Mike Martin, last week we were trying to get the CDS pinned down on articulating the threat so that the public are aware and you can make those arguments that you talked about. That seemed to be what you were trying to say: that stuff needs to be kept secret, but that we ne…”

“I meant that there was anger about the pets getting out.”

“Sorry, but I am just trying to get my head around this. Obviously that was July, and you are saying that you think things would have changed by the autumn.”

“The point I am trying to make is that, if the right people have not been held to account, it does not negate things like this happening in the future. From what I am hearing from you, you do not think that everyone has been held to account. I do not want to paraphrase you, but it sounds like you are saying that not eve…”

“On what basis, though? What advice were you getting that, in that short space of time, the situation would have changed?”

“On the day before the general election, you decided to appeal the High Court’s decision to lift the injunction. Can you tell us why that was?”

“I have lots of constituents who still do not know whether their wider family are alive or not. That haunts me. Do you think the Department actually understands that? I know that you left not long after the breach became known, but was the culture there that people understood the wider implications of all that? Did peop…”

“Thank you. Sorry for cutting you off; I know the Chair is very keen to conclude.”

“There was a lot of anger about that.”

“We now know that the breach involved risk to life for thousands of Afghans and cost the UK public purse hundreds of millions, if not billions, of pounds. Continuing on my colleagues’ theme, how were you assured during your time in office that the Department genuinely got it, understood the impact of the breach and had …”

“That was in total desperation.”

“I welcome the Prime Minister’s calm diplomacy this morning. It is right that only adversaries stand to gain from the fracturing of NATO. The Government do not believe that the US President is serious about using military force to seize Greenland, but even in just the past hour he has refused to rule that out. My right …”

“I thank my hon. Friend for her statement, and my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne) for the leadership that he has shown on this. It is right that we have a pause, but the Minister will know how distressing this is for the families, and about the emotional and physical toll that going back and …”

“I thank my hon. Friend for his engagement so far on this issue. It will come as no surprise to him that we need a cut to VAT and the maximum 20p discount for business rates applied across hospitality, not just pubs, because nobody wants to drink in a pub surrounded by boarded-up cafés, restaurants and B&Bs. Can I u…”

“This is a mess. Increasing surveillance, Department for Work and Pensions powers to snoop on bank accounts, the removal of trials by jury, postponing elections and clamping down on peaceful protest—the public are starting to become very angry about these encroachments on our fundamental freedoms and creeping state cont…”