Speeches by Powell.

“But there isn’t an example where a Minister has wilfully—”

“The resolution of the House isn’t—”

“No, I don’t—look, I think we are talking at slight cross-purposes here. Obviously, from Mr Speaker, who I speak to regularly about these matters—and I fully respect his role as Speaker in holding us to account for these things—there is this question about, on some occasions, for some types of announcements, how much is…”

“I disagree with your characterisation of the situation. Nobody here has given me an egregious example of where one of the most important Government announcements has not been made to the House.”

“Not that section of “Erskine May”.”

“Well, we still do, actually, because the Standards Committee does.”

“More recently, a good friend of mine, Bev Hughes, who is now in the Lords, resigned as an immigration Minister because information she had been given by her officials turned out not to be correct and she repeated it to the House, so it does happen. Let us not underestimate what the Privileges Committee did. I know it i…”

“As I say, these are expectations, in any case. As I say, there is no need to get into a semantic argument about it. And we are making judgments about how that is done, when it is done, and about what is “the most important”, what is “first”, and what is “in session”. These are all things that we are having to consider.”

“Forgive me for not knowing—”

“I can’t remember who Hugh Dalton was.”

“I’ve never been accused of being pure, Chair.”

“The Ministerial Code, Ministers’ behaviour and the appointment and dismissal of Ministers is a constitutional role for the Prime Minister, who is tasked with doing that on behalf of His Majesty. That is the constitutional role of the Prime Minister. As we have discussed, whether or not this particular matter is in the …”

“No, I would not, actually. This comes from the top, from the Prime Minister, and what I would say is that he takes his responsibility and the responsibility of this Government to Parliament, and to respecting Parliament, incredibly seriously. That is why he and I remind Cabinet colleagues of that on a regular basis. I …”

“It is, but I can’t be late!”

“Obviously the Prime Minister would determine those. If there was a wilful attempt by a Minister to give information to the media that had not been agreed, or if a Minister was absolutely refusing to come to the House on an important matter on which the Prime Minister wanted that Minister to come to the House, then I ca…”

“As I said, the Ministerial Code is a matter for the Prime Minister. As you know, there is an Independent Adviser on the Ministerial Code. The Prime Minister, in taking office, wants to make sure that we are a Government of service and that we uphold the highest possible standards. That is why he has given the Adviser o…”

“I need to get in for PMQs.”

“I would say a couple of things. The proportion of UQs granted in this Parliament is significantly lower than in the previous Parliament. The number of applications is going up significantly as it is seen as a more topical and more everyday device than it once was. I think the use of UQs is going up because people want …”

“What I would say about that particular instance was that two were urgent questions granted. An urgent question was granted on a particular aspect of the SDR, and there was an urgent question granted against me on the process of the SDR, both of which, as it turned out, delayed the SDR coming to the House. Otherwise, th…”

“I am sure will hear from the Speaker on this issue. Obviously, the Speaker is the Chair of the House, and he is there, with the will of the House, to reflect its views, rather than his own.”