Speeches by Thomas-Symonds.

“No. The scope of the motion could also include thousands of documents. It is obviously in the national interest to protect national security, and to be transparent and act with urgency—I completely accept that—but it is important that we now take time and care to balance those elements.”

“Beyond the deadline to amend the motion—a familiar situation that the right hon. and learned Member and I have found ourselves in before—I want to say something very clearly. I hope the House takes my previous answer on this as having been given in good faith—”

“I am someone who rewards effort, so as the right hon. Gentleman has put in such effort, I will give way.”

“I hope the House has seen, even over the course of this debate, the constructive approach I have tried to take on the role of the ISC in this process. That is precisely what I have done. I want to turn now to another aspect of this matter, which is the peerage. Another action the Government are determined to take is to…”

“Let me make some progress, and I might come back to interventions. The Government have tabled amendment (a), so that documents are published unless they prejudice national security or international relations—I know I was asked a specific question about international relations—because of course such documents might cont…”

“I think my hon. Friend and I have similar memories of that particular Parliament. To give an example, in the motion relating to Lebedev, we included the words, “in a form which may contain redactions, but such redactions shall be solely for the purposes of national security.” When I was involved in drafting Humble Addr…”

“Well, I hope that the House always takes me at my word when I say that I will take these matters away with me. The Cabinet Secretary will be taking independent advice on the decisions he takes through this process, and he intends for that advice to take two forms. First, he will have the advice of an independent KC thr…”

“I will make some more progress, before giving way a few more times. Members will recall that back in September—in the light of the additional information contained in emails written by Peter Mandelson that were released at the time—the Prime Minister asked the Foreign Secretary to withdraw him as ambassador with immedi…”

“Yes, and of course—without straying into a new topic entirely—the issue with infected blood is that it is a pre-devolution age scandal. Part of the issue with infected blood is that, while of course it is UK-wide, some of Sir Brian Langstaff’s recommendations actually require the devolved Administrations to—”

“That is not set yet. I have said that I want it to be through Parliament by the end of the year. That may require it to be introduced in this Session before the King’s Speech in May. My objective now is to make sure that we have it in place. I am always subject to the upper House and how long they wish to take on these…”

“I don’t think there is a constitutional reason, to my knowledge, but I defer to Home Office colleagues on the scope of the inquiry. I have not been involved in that particular decision, John, but I would be quite happy to get them to write to you if that would be helpful.”

“That is one of the ones that is under this new process, which has been signed off in the Cabinet Office. But, Cat, on an official level I think we have some—”

“Absolutely. To be clear, whether in respect of DEFRA, the Secretary of State or myself at the centre, it is hugely important that we are engaging properly with major stakeholders and stakeholders more generally. There will be thousands of businesses affected. There will obviously be significant benefit to businesses wh…”

“I would not pick one and say, “As of today, that is the one we will choose to emulate.” Everyone around this table will remember the covid inquiries, and there were some countries, particularly in Europe, that were doing their inquiries in a very quick fashion. What I will undertake to you, as will my officials, is tha…”

“First of all, I would say that the UK can of course still participate in SAFE in up to 35% of the content, and that remains the case, irrespective of the outcome. Let me go back for a moment, because you highlighted the extraordinarily serious position that international politics is in at the moment. The Prime Minister…”

“Yes. I can see why the power is there, and there is theoretically the possibility that you had a chair who started behaving in an unreasonable or unacceptable manner. Fortunately, we have not had that situation as yet.”

“In order for me to get it through by the end of the year, we will not go through a pre-legislative scrutiny process. The Bill will be introduced, but I assure you that there will be lots of debate on it when it appears. You will have every opportunity in its passage, as would ordinarily be the case—for Markus in the Co…”

“I am not aware that the power has ever been used. I stand to be corrected, but I do not think it has ever been used. I find it difficult to envisage circumstances in which that might happen—perhaps if a chair behaved in an appropriate or unreasonable way. I do not know; I cannot envisage the circumstances at the moment…”

“Yes, I was described quite recently as “long-serving”; I was surprised, given what feels like the relatively short amount of time I have been in the role in the Cabinet Office, but maybe that is just relative to recent years. In terms of the UK-EU relationship and the progress since the May summit, I think we have made…”

“Let me move on from the specific example, because I think you have raised a couple of really important broader points. First, with some public inquiries, it may be that by the time they have reported, the processes of Government or the public sector will have changed anyway. I am not referring to your particular case—I…”