Opposition Day: Papers relating to the Home Secretary

Proposed by Yvette Cooper

I beg to move, That, given the exceptional security concerns raised regarding the Rt Hon Member for Fareham serving as Secretary of State for the Home Department, this House: (1) orders that there be laid before this House, within ten sitting days, a return of the following papers: (a) any risk asse… I beg to move, That, given the exceptional security concerns raised regarding the Rt Hon Member for Fareham serving as Secretary of State for the Home Department, this House: (1) orders that there be laid before this House, within ten sitting days, a return of the following papers: (a) any risk assessment of the Rt Hon Member for Fareham by the Cabinet Office or the Prime Minister’s Office relating to her appointment (b) any document held by the Cabinet Office, the Home Office or the Prime Minister’s Office containing or related to (i) any security breaches by the Rt Hon Member for Fareham (ii) any leak inquiries regarding the Rt Hon Member for Fareham, including during her time as Home Secretary and Attorney General (c) the minutes of, submissions relevant to and electronic communications relating to, any meeting within the Cabinet Office or the Prime Minister’s Office at which the appointment of the Rt Hon Member for Fareham, or advice relating to that appointment, was discussed in a form which may contain redactions, but such redactions shall be solely for the purposes of national security; and (2) recommends that where material is laid before the House in a redacted form, the Government should at the same time provide unredacted copies of such material to the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament. It is 15 days since the Prime Minister appointed his new Cabinet, and 14 days since it was reported that he had been advised not to reappoint certain Ministers, including the Home Secretary and, it was rumoured, the Minister without Portfolio, the right hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson), to their posts on the grounds of standards and of security. Fourteen days in which it has been reported that the Home Secretary breached Home Office security arrangements not just once but seven times; that she may have also broken insider trading rules; that as Attorney General she was investigated several times by leak inquiries; that she ignored legal advice on Manston, contrary to her statement to Parliament; and that she failed to take the action needed to solve the dangerous overcrowding at Manston, leaving her successor and predecessor to pick up the pieces, and that she may well have run up a huge legal liability for the taxpayer as a result, breaching the ministerial code again in the process. It has also been reported that the Minister with Portfolio sent abusive texts to the then Government Chief Whip, that the Prime Minister was told about this and knew the former Chief Whip had put in a formal complaint, and that there are other complaints against the Minister without Portfolio including, most seriously, words used towards a civil servant about slitting his throat or jumping out of windows—words that it is reported the Minister with Portfolio has not denied using. This is in the space of two weeks. Many people have been appalled by these appointments, and serious doubts have been raised by many Conservative Members who believe standards need to be maintained. The Prime Minister promised us that this would be a break from his predecessors, from the favours-for-mates culture of the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) and from the chaos of the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss). Instead, the opposite has happened. People have been appointed to senior jobs in the Cabinet, running the country, not because they can do the job or because they will maintain the high standards and security that the Government need but because of dodgy political deals. Here is what we know: the Home Secretary breached the ministerial code, sent Government documents not only to her private email but to other people outside Government who were not authorised to receive them, including a Back-Bench Member, his spouse, and someone else entirely by accident. She was forced to resign and then, six days later, she was reappointed. That, in itself, is extremely hard for people ou

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