Conservative and Unionist Party: a sourced timeline of public activity, with filters by source type and a sidebar of tracked totals

Conservative and Unionist Party

Showing every spoken contribution, including 5,750 under 12 words. Hide short remarks

  1. ParliamentDavid Simmonds

    English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Twelfth sitting)

    I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. The intent of the new clause is very much in line with the recommendations that Mr Speaker has recently made in respect of Members of Parliament. There has been a degree of concern about the intimidation and victimisation of politicians and the impact that has had on wider public debate. It has been a long-standing principle that a person needs to declare their eligibility to stand in a particular place, and in a local authority there are specific requirements connected to the local area that person is seeking to serve. However, it has been a widespread view for some time that there needs to be a degree of confidentiality so that members who are concerned that they will be victimised are able not to have that data, that information, placed in the public domain. Once they have satisfied the local authority’s returning officer that they meet the requirements—with evidence, as is currently the case—their home address does not need to be placed in the public domain, creating risk. We think the precedent that Mr Speaker set out in respect to Members of Parliament is absolutely right. The intent of the new clause is to achieve the same for our locally elected brethren. I am sure that to achieve that objective, the Government will be pleased to support the new clause.

    Hansard source

  2. ParliamentDavid Simmonds

    English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Twelfth sitting)

    I am afraid that I am not reassured. I am particularly concerned, because we know that “when parliamentary time allows” means this could be kicked into the long grass for a very long time. Given some of the incidents we have seen, which have affected both Members of this House and our locally elected peers, we know this has become a more pressing issue. Some locally elected members see it—as some Members of Parliament do—as an advantage to have their home address published, and we, as Members of Parliament, are free to make that choice. At the moment, we can say, “I wish it to be known that I live at this address,” or, “I wish it to be known that I live, anonymised, in a constituency”, which is how it is listed for Members of Parliament. Broadly, the same provisions should apply, so those councillors and candidates who prefer to keep their address confidential should be able to do that, as we can. Those who choose to take advantage of that additional degree of confidentiality—perhaps because they have a young family or caring responsibilities, or whatever it may be—should be able to take advantage of that. If we fail to include this measure in the Bill, I suspect we will see a number of local election cycles in which local council candidates will not have the same opportunity as we do. I will therefore be pressing the new clause to a vote. I encourage the Government, if they are not minded to accept it now, to consider implementing it when the Bill gets to the Lords, because we have a duty of care to our local councillors. Giving them the same opportunity that we have as Members of Parliament seems an entirely reasonable and minimal measure of protection to offer. Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

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  3. ParliamentDavid Simmonds

    English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Twelfth sitting)

    Does the hon. Lady share my concern that during the passage of the Bill we have heard from some Members that they have been given assurances from the Government? Ministers have clarified that no such assurances have been given. Indeed, in response to a written parliamentary question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Sir James Cleverly), the Minister set out that there are no provisions in the Bill that would provide such identity protections. Does the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole feel that this is something to which we need to return? Despite an impression that assurances have been given, it is clear that they are not present.

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  4. ParliamentDavid Simmonds

    English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Twelfth sitting)

    It falls to me, as the shadow Minister, to be the voice for Conservatives in Cornwall, who would absolutely agree with everything that the hon. Gentleman says. There is strong cross-party consensus. The reason we tabled our amendments, which were very similar in spirit to the hon. Gentleman’s, was to seek an assurance that because of Cornwall’s unique situation, there would be provisions in the legislation that would protect it. The hon. Gentleman said very clearly that he had received assurances on the basis of which he had decided to withdraw his amendments. Since then, the Minister has clarified, in response to a written question, that there are no provisions in the Bill that would provide that protected status. Can the hon. Gentleman share with the Committee whether he has had any further assurances since that date to give us all comfort that the unique identity of Cornwall will be protected in the changes envisaged in this legislation?

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  5. ParliamentDavid Simmonds

    English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Twelfth sitting)

    I echo those comments, Dame Siobhain. The Bill may be poor, but the organisation and support have been flawless—[Interruption.] And the quality of the heckling is without parallel. I know we will be returning to many of the topics of debate later on in the parliamentary process, so we will have the opportunity to relitigate and seek to deliver the necessary improvements to the legislation. I thank all the officials, all those who contributed to the Bill, and the witnesses, whose evidence has been so helpful.

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  6. ParliamentDavid Reed

    China Spying Case

    The Minister expresses deep regret that this case has not gone to trial. I want to believe him on that, but the case did not go to trial. With the power of hindsight, if he was to go back and do this all again, what would the Minister have done differently to ensure that this case did go to trial?

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  7. ParliamentDame Harriett Baldwin

    Stamp Duty Land Tax

    The shadow Chancellor is making a powerful speech. Is he aware that recently in the Treasury Committee we were given evidence by a range of tax specialists, all of whom endorsed abolishing stamp duty?

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  8. ParliamentChris Philp

  9. ParliamentChris Philp

    China Spying Case

    On that point, will the Minister give way?

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  10. ParliamentChris Philp

    China Spying Case

    The Minister has said twice in the last minute that the question was the policy of the last Government. Let me take him to page 4 of the letter from the Director of Public Prosecutions, dated Thursday of last week. In that letter, the DPP said—

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  11. ParliamentChris Philp

    China Spying Case

    The DPP said the opposite of what the Minister has said. He said that the issue was a question of fact, and not—categorically not—the policy of the last Government.

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  12. ParliamentChris Philp

  13. ParliamentChris Philp

    China Spying Case

    “In my opinion, China poses an active and current threat to the United Kingdom.” That is all that the Government needed to say to the Crown Prosecution Service in order to secure this conviction, and yet they did not. As recently as 12 days ago, the director general of M15 said that China posed a daily threat. In July 2022, he and his FBI counterpart said that China was posing a growing threat. The former Security Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat), said it in April 2024, from that Dispatch Box, and the July 2021 integrated review said that China posed the “biggest state-based threat to the UK’s economic security.” It is pretty simple. I have said it, and the Government could have said it, but they did not. The Government’s commentary on this case has been evasive and sometimes misleading. For example, the Prime Minister claimed in India, on 7 October, that what mattered in this case was the previous Government’s designation of China. He said it again, from that Dispatch Box, on 15 October. He said that the issue was the position of the last Government, and the Paymaster General said it again in his opening speech. That claim, made by the Prime Minister and made again by the Paymaster General earlier today, is categorically untrue. We know it is untrue because on page 4 of his letter, the Director of Public Prosecutions said it was untrue. He said: “The test was therefore positively not what the then Government was prepared to… say in public…whether framed as…policy or otherwise…but…whether China was—as a matter of fact—an active threat to national security.” He said it again in evidence yesterday. He said: “We were looking to the DNSA to provide evidence of the actual threat…and not what government policy was.” The DPP has said that categorically in writing and in evidence yesterday. What the Prime Minister said was misleading, and I ask this Minister, the Security Minister, to retract it on the Prime Minister’s behalf. Moreover, the Security Minister himself said on 15 September that the collapse of the case had come as a big surprise to the Government, and that they heard about it only that morning. He said: “the decision was communicated this morning”.—[Official Report, 15 September 2025; Vol. 772, c. 1187.] That, I am afraid, was not true. The decision was communicated on 3 September at the latest, and it most certainly did not come as a surprise to the Government. It was not the case that, as the Minister claimed, he could not comment on why the case had collapsed, as if he did not know about it, because on no fewer than nine different occasions, according to the DPP, the Crown Prosecution Service pleaded with the Government—begged the Government—to say those simple words that I said a couple of minutes ago and the Government, over two years, refused to say. In June 2024, December 2024, February 2025, May 2025, July 2025—twice, on 3 and 10 July—August 2025, 3 September 2025 and 9 September 2025, the CPS begged the Government to say those simple words, and the Government would not say them. Why exactly was the Security Minister acting all surprised on 15 September, claiming that he did not know what was going on, when on nine separate occasions the CPS had pleaded with the Government? Now we come to the meeting of 1 September, a meeting that the Home Secretary, quoted in The Telegraph on 5 October, claimed did not happen. Well, we now know that it did happen. What we do not know, however, is precisely what was discussed at that meeting. We have not seen the minutes of it, and we do not know the actions arising from it. We do know that it was chaired by Jonathan Powell, the National Security Adviser. We know that many people were there. We know that the deputy National Security Adviser, Matt Collins, was there. We also know that on 14 August, two and a half weeks before that meeting, he attended a conference that included the First Treasury Counsel, at which it became clear that Mr Collins would not change his evidence, and the case would therefore collapse. So Mr Collins went into that meeting on 1 September, most likely knowing that the case was unlikely to proceed. Was that discussed? Was the possibility of providing more evidence discussed in that meeting? We do not know. That is why the minutes need to be published. We know for a fact that, on 3 September, the Director of Public Prosecutions informed the Cabinet Secretary and the DNSA that the case was not going to be proceeding on the evidence as it stood. The DPP also said in page 6 of his letter: “It was agreed that” the Cabinet Secretary “might inform a limited group, including some ministers.” I therefore ask the Security Minister to tell the House now which Ministers were informed pursuant to that meeting on 3 September, and whether they took any action as a result—for example, deciding to provide better evidence, which they could have done. It was recently reported in The Sunday Times that the Home Secretary got wind of this around that time, and decided to try to intervene. I did ask the Security Minister this in an urgent question last week, and many of my hon. Friends did as well, but he did not answer the question, so perhaps he now can: when did the Home Secretary become aware of the collapse of the trial? Did she try to intervene? If so, how? It is quite clear that the Government, had they wanted to, could have intervened between 3 September, when the Cabinet Secretary was informed and was given permission to inform Ministers, and the meeting on 9 September, six days later, when the CPS tried, one last time—at least the ninth time—to get the evidence it needed, but, once again, it was not forthcoming. Did the Government have any discussions in that period, between 3 and 9 September, about further evidence that they might have provided? If they did not, why not? A few simple words were all that were needed—words not about the previous Government’s policy, but about the facts as they stood on the ground. I uttered those words just a few minutes ago—it was simple enough—and if this Government had said what I said a few minutes ago, this case would have proceeded. Why did they choose not to do that? Members of this Parliament have been spied on by a hostile state: a state that has stolen intellectual property on an industrial scale, both covertly and through acquisition; a state that plans to build a large embassy, probably for espionage purposes among other things; a state that has opened secret police stations; a state that has put bounties on the heads of people living in the United Kingdom; and a state that has actively supported Russia in its war against Ukraine. The Government could not produce evidence that it was an active and current threat, even though I think it is quite clear to everyone in this Chamber that it was. Why did the Government not provide the evidence they were asked to provide at least nine times? Is it because they are more interested in getting some sort of economic bailout from the Chinese, to fix the mess they have created, than they are in our national security? That is the question they need to answer. If this House and the country are to understand exactly what happened with this case, we need full transparency and full disclosure: the minutes of those meetings, the actions arising from them, and the correspondence with the CPS. If they really want transparency—as the Minister for the Cabinet Office said earlier—all they have to do is support this motion and put this material where it belongs: in the public domain.

    Hansard source

  14. ParliamentChris Philp

  15. ParliamentChris Philp

  16. ParliamentBradley Thomas

    Stamp Duty Land Tax

    The Minister is in no position to lecture on reducing the size of the state, given that when Labour attempted to reduce the welfare bill, it marched all of its MPs up the hill, only to march them down again, when it buckled under the pressure from its own Back Benchers.

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  17. ParliamentBradley Thomas

    Stamp Duty Land Tax

    Does the hon. Gentleman regret the fact that his Government have not honoured their pre-election promise to reduce council tax?

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  18. ParliamentBradley Thomas

    Stamp Duty Land Tax

    I call on the hon. Gentleman to reflect on the fact that, regardless of our political differences, it is the Conservative party that has delivered three female Prime Ministers and the first Prime Minister from an ethnic minority background, while his has not managed to present any other leader than a white man.

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  19. ParliamentBradley Thomas

  20. ParliamentBradley Thomas

  21. ParliamentBradley Thomas

    Stamp Duty Land Tax

    Does the hon. Member accept that over the last 30 years, the four years with the highest levels of new housing delivery occurred since 2018, under Conservative Governments? She is trying to make the point that stamp duty abolition is a tax cut dressed up as an intervention in the housing market. What on earth is wrong with giving a tax cut to aspirational people who work hard and want to move up the housing ladder?

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  22. ParliamentBradley Thomas

    Stamp Duty Land Tax

    It is a pleasure to speak in this debate on this important topic, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is one that I am passionate about. I got involved in politics to make people’s lives better, and to be on the side of those who work hard, do the right thing and aspire for themselves and their family. That is the fundamental point at the core of this argument. My hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin) made a great point when he said that this is a moral mission. It is a moral mission to be on the side of those who are aspirational, and to unlock the hopes and dreams of a generation who want a tangible stake in society but have great fears that they will never have it. Stamp duty, for many, is a tax on that dream home, on that bridge between where they are today and where they want to go tomorrow, particularly for their family. We have heard a lot in this debate about first-time buyers, and it is right that we focus on them; it is particularly shameful that one of the first acts of this Labour Government was to lower the threshold at which stamp duty was imposed on those first-time buyers. But once a first-time buyer has been in their home for a few years and had a child, and maybe a second, and wants to move up the property ladder into a house that will better meet their needs, that is when this tax really starts to bite. Constituents have approached me to say that they are able to afford a mortgage on their next home, and have even identified one that they want to move into, but the stamp duty prevents them from moving. What strikes me about this argument between the two sides of the House—and, in fact, between Opposition parties as well—is that many make the case that if we removed stamp duty, it would cause house prices to rise. If it was removed as a temporary measure, there would be a chance of that happening, but if it was removed in perpetuity, the housing market would regularise without a huge increase in prices. That is the key to unlocking the aspiration that so many have for themselves and their family. I do not believe that Labour Members have particularly nefarious intent; I can only conclude that their position really does demonstrate the politics of envy. It is a fact of life that some in society will always have more wealth than others—the scale is always relative—but even if those at the upper end of the wealth scale benefit from the abolition of stamp duty, those further down the chain will also benefit. The great reality of this proposal is that it is universal in its application, so everyone will benefit. This is fundamentally about unlocking mobility and the aspirations of so many. It applies not just to first-time buyers and those wanting to move up the ladder, but to those who want to downsize, whom we have heard so much about today. There are plenty of constituents across Bromsgrove and the villages who are asset-rich but cash-poor, and who are trapped in larger houses but would like to downsize, should the fiscal incentive be there for them to do so. Stamp duty, in the form of tens of thousands of pounds, is absolutely key in so many cases.

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  23. ParliamentBradley Thomas

    Stamp Duty Land Tax

    My hon. Friend makes a valid and important point. That is one of the great peripheral benefits of this policy, should the Government embrace it, and I encourage them to look seriously at it. I encourage the Government to vote for this motion, even if only to show their intent, and even if they cannot implement it anytime soon. We have heard about the stimulus effect. The typical spend of a family moving house is around £9,000. My hon. Friend the Member for Windsor pointed out that those employed in trades would benefit from saving that money. These are people who are not necessarily rich; they are hard workers who set their alarms in the morning. They are the very people who have aspiration for their family and want to be able to move up the property ladder. One of the fundamental ideologies that have emanated from Labour Members is a denial of capitalism and the role that it plays in driving up prosperity. My right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) made this point eloquently: capitalism is not something that we should be afraid of; it is the biggest driver of prosperity that the western world has known. Labour Members should embrace it with a little bit more vigour. A point that I have to touch on, because it affects my constituency so profoundly, is the Government’s increase in housing targets. We Conservative Members are not anti-house building, but we believe that house building has to be proportionate. Bromsgrove and the villages is a 79% rural constituency. It really is the green buffer between Worcestershire and the urban sprawl of Birmingham. It is 89% green belt, yet our housing target has increased by a staggering 85%, whereas the housing target in adjacent Birmingham has decreased by over 30%. I have given various Ministers various opportunities to address this point of the Floor of the House, but no one has been able to do so yet, so I can only assume that, in the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox), the Government are “fiddling” the figures for political reasons. I would welcome it if the Minister could address the disproportionate burden that the Government’s housing targets are putting on rural areas, including Bromsgrove and the villages. There is something that the Government could do to make the bitter pill of more housing easier to swallow, but they abandoned the idea on day one: make high-quality design a central tenet in the planning system. The previous Government opened the Office for Place, which is an advisory body that advises the Secretary of State on the quality of the built environment. Every single Government, regardless of political colour, should embrace the principles of good design, because they lead not just to good houses, but to better communities. If the Government can convey to communities that new housing is not going to impose red-brick monotony that erodes their sense of identity and character, there will be much more openness from communities to the house building agenda.

    Hansard source

  24. ParliamentBradley Thomas

    Stamp Duty Land Tax

    My hon. Friend is spot-on. That is incredibly short-sighted, and I think it will prove to be a false economy. I urge the Government to embrace good design to provide a justification to my constituents for why they are pursuing the current house building targets in such a disproportionate way across the country. Most of all, I implore the Government to put at the centre of their fiscal plans the scale of ambition that hard-working people have every single day when they set their alarms and go out to work—they want to do the right thing for their families. The Government must realise that pulling the right fiscal levers and cutting the right taxes will stimulate the very activity that will drive the growth they are so desperate to achieve.

    Hansard source

  25. ParliamentBradley Thomas

    China Spying Case

    Does my hon. Friend agree that the most obvious point is that, despite the Government’s disappointment at the collapse of the trial—we have heard numerous Ministers, including the Prime Minister himself, stress that—it is shocking that they appear not to have done every single thing possible to bolster the case and put the CPS in the best possible position to secure a prosecution? The two just do not add up.

    Hansard source

  26. ParliamentBradley Thomas

  27. ParliamentBob Blackman

    Gaza Peace Plan

    Thankfully, the living hostages have been returned to receive medical attention and go back to their families, but, very sadly, the bodies of the deceased hostages have not all been returned. That is a key element in this ceasefire treaty. What action is the Foreign Secretary taking to ensure that Israel is supported—and, if necessary, that the Palestinians are supported—to identify the bodies of the deceased hostages and that those bodies are returned, so that there can be closure for the families?

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  28. ParliamentBob Blackman

    Stamp Duty Land Tax

    Does my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor accept that the housing market is virtually stagnant? It is moribund. The houses and flats that we want in this country are not being built, and one of the barriers is that the cost of stamp duty is so high that individuals do not want to pay it.

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  29. ParliamentBlake Stephenson

    Stamp Duty Land Tax

    Stamp duty is the worst kind of tax; there seems to be cross-party consensus on that point today. It stands in the way of the aspiring young couple who want to buy their first home, or move on and bring up a family. It punishes the older couple who want to downsize to a more suitable home once their family have flown the nest. It stifles growth and restricts mobility, and it has become so complex that it confuses even Deputy Prime Ministers. It is in all our interests to simplify it, and we can do that by abolishing it, so that we can get the housing market moving once again. Members on both sides of the House have said that the market is bunged up, and it absolutely is. So many properties have been on the market for many months, not selling. That applies to houses at all points on the housing chain, not just multimillion-pound houses; but if those multimillion-pound houses do not sell, houses throughout the chain will also not sell, which has an impact on young people, families and old people throughout the country. We have made a commitment to unshackling our housing market by abolishing stamp duty on primary residences. I was extremely pleased when that was announced at the Conservative party conference a few weeks ago. I was also pleased by the honesty of my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) when he said that this debate had been ongoing in the party for some time, and I am very pleased indeed that we have settled on this position. In my constituency, the average house price is about £372,500. Purchasing a property at that price—if the online stamp duty calculators are accurate—would require a stamp duty outlay of £8,625. When the stamp duty land tax was introduced on land transactions by the then Labour Government in December 2003, the average house price in my constituency was £169,000, which meant a stamp duty outlay of just £1,090. When stamp duty is taken together with increasing house prices, there has been a 224% increase in the cost of buying a home; average earnings have risen by just 190% in the same period. Abolishing stamp duty will not fix that overnight. We still need to do more to build warm, dry homes in the places where people want to live, and I am pleased that today’s debate has been broadened slightly to cover the subject of house building. I think that parties across the House want to build good-quality homes in the right places to enable young people to get on to the housing ladder. We do not seem to be at odds on that. However, those homes need to be in the right places, and I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire that their quality is incredibly important. If we improve the quality of new build homes, our communities will be much more open to accepting house building, which will increase supply and improve opportunities for young people. That is critical for all Members on both sides of the House. In places like London, however, this Government and their Labour Mayor of London have utterly failed to tackle a severe housing crisis; there are lower targets, and there is reduced aspiration, rather than ambition. Building more houses will help to arrest the charging growth in house prices, but we know that just building is unlikely to bring prices down. Some 20% fewer 25 to 34-year-olds are homeowners today than in the year 2000. Average first-time buyers are almost a decade older today than in the 1980s. Our property market is failing our young people. We must therefore do more to make it more affordable for people to make that next move. The Chancellor, desperate to raise more money following her economic vandalism, wants to drag more people into paying stamp duty, or into a higher rate of stamp duty, by freezing thresholds. Reform, which is reportedly about to scrap its half-baked stamp duty plans, is looking to concrete over our green belt, as it lacks any credible plans to deliver homes at all. The Conservatives are the only party with a sensible plan to unlock our housing market and give young people a stake in society and roots in their communities. By abolishing stamp duty on primary residences, we can make it more than 2% cheaper for families to buy the average house in my constituency overnight. We can save prospective first-time buyers in London an average of £18,000—and I am sure that at least one hon. Member on the Government Benches, the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake), might wish to comment on the savings that she could deliver to her constituents by supporting this motion and pushing this policy through within her party. That is the sort of real impact that people will feel in their pockets, and that they will feel while unboxing their prized possessions in the living room of their new family home. It will enable a new generation of young people to achieve the dream of home ownership, enable families to move up the housing ladder into more suitable family homes, unlock our housing market, and knock down a barrier to social mobility, stimulating our economy and abolishing the drag on growth. That is what I got into politics to deliver: less Government red tape, fewer taxes on aspiration and mobility, and families in homes of their own.

    Hansard source

  30. ParliamentBlake Stephenson

    Stamp Duty Land Tax

    The hon. Member is making a powerful argument. I just wonder whether he has reflected on the size of the welfare budget. Is he making the argument that welfare spending should not come down at all?

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  31. ParliamentBlake Stephenson

    Stamp Duty Land Tax

    Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be helpful if the Government were much more ambitious in finding the savings in their Budget, in order to deliver this ambitious policy that would support young people up and down our country?

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  32. ParliamentBlake Stephenson

    Stamp Duty Land Tax

    The hon. Member is making a powerful point in support of our motion. Does he intend to support it this afternoon?

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  33. ParliamentAndrew Rosindell

    UK-Mauritius Agreement on the Chagos Archipelago: Funding

    Last week, Labour voted against our amendment, which would have given the House of Commons a say on the Government’s reckless decision to surrender £35 billion of taxpayers’ hard-earned money to Mauritius for the privilege of giving away our own sovereign territory, but we still have no certainty from the Government about the fate of the vital Diego Garcia base after the 99-year period. What is stopping Mauritius demanding billions more if the UK wishes to extend the use of Diego Garcia for another 40 years? Would it not be more sensible to save the money, ditch the surrender deal and the keep the Chagos islands British?

    Hansard source

  34. ParliamentAlex Burghart

    China Spying Case

    I beg to move, That this House calls on the Government to release the minutes of the meeting chaired by the National Security Adviser on 1 September 2025, at which the prosecution of the two alleged Chinese spies, since dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service, was discussed, including all actions arising from that meeting; and further calls on the Government to publish the minutes of all other meetings where the case was discussed, whether by officials or with Ministers, all relevant correspondence between the Crown Prosecution Service and the Government and between Departments, including correspondence between the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Cabinet Office, Attorney General’s Office, and the Treasury, and advice provided to the Prime Minister relating to the China spy case. The purpose of this Opposition day debate and of our motion is very simple: transparency—that is all that we ask for. The basic facts are that two men were arrested on suspicion of having spied on hon. Members of this House for China, and the Director of Public Prosecutions has acknowledged that this appears to have been a “gross breach of trust” against hon. Members, yet the case against the two men collapsed because, in the words of the senior Treasury counsel, Tom Little KC, the case was “effectively unsustainable”; it was brought to “a crashing halt” because the Government’s own witness, the deputy National Security Adviser, refused to provide the fatal piece of evidence. Mr Little had what he called a million-dollar question: was China an active threat to national security? The deputy National Security Adviser repeatedly refused to say yes. The Government effectively refused to say what was patently apparent to anyone remotely alive to the facts of the case. This House has every reason to be told why they refused, and why, for example, the Prime Minister did not intervene to prevent the case collapsing, when we know he was warned that it was unlikely to proceed. It is also reported that the Home Secretary tried to intervene. We do not call for the publication of this material lightly. We know it is an extraordinary measure to call for the Government to publish documents relating to the formation of policy, but this is an extraordinary event. We have reached this point because the Government have been unable or unwilling to answer basic questions about what they knew when, and why they acted as they did. They have hidden behind civil servants and advisers, when it is Ministers who are supposed to make decisions, and in doing so, they have brought the actions and decisions of those advisers and officials into the spotlight in a way that is most irregular. Just as worryingly, there has been a persistent inaccuracy and inconsistency in the Government’s statements, to the point where this House can no longer trust a word of theirs. There are a number of examples. First, on 13 October, the Security Minister denied in this House that the mega-mandarin meeting on 1 September, which is the subject of our motion, took place. Last week, the Solicitor General admitted that the meeting did take place. We now know that it was led by the National Security Adviser and attended by the Cabinet Secretary, the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, senior representation from the Home Office and the Attorney General’s office, and the chief of MI5, but we still do not know what was said there, what was agreed or why the Government tried to deny its existence.

    Hansard source

  35. ParliamentAlex Burghart

    China Spying Case

    My right hon. Friend makes a very pertinent point and is personally very experienced in such things. It has been reported that the National Security Adviser chaired that meeting. That is to say that he was taking a very active role in what was going on. That is why it is incredibly important that the Government come clean with us about what happened in that meeting, who attended and what was decided there.

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  36. ParliamentAlex Burghart

    China Spying Case

    My right hon. Friend is right: the National Security Adviser showed a great reluctance to attend. I understand that he has now agreed to attend, although the report I read said that he was going to attend in camera. If that report is correct—the Minister has the opportunity to say it is not true—I am not sure that that is the best level of transparency that this House might expect. The second instance of inconsistency and inaccuracy that we draw attention to is from 7 October, when the Prime Minister told journalists that what mattered in this case was the designation of China as it had been in 2023, when the offences were alleged to have occurred. However, last week, on 24 October, the Director of Public Prosecutions said that that was categorically not the case. He said: “The test was…positively not what the then Government was prepared to, or did, say in public about China…but rather whether China was—as a matter of fact—an active threat to national security.” This is a most important point, and one that was revisited yesterday. There is a very serious question about why the deputy National Security Adviser believed that he would “need to be in line with government policy at the time”, when the Crown Prosecution Service said that it did not need to know about policy, but about the facts. The Minister should explain to the House why the deputy National Security Adviser chose to ignore the CPS in this case. He should also tell us whether he thinks the deputy National Security Adviser complied with civil procedure rule 35, which requires him to assist the court and overrides any other obligation.

    Hansard source

  37. ParliamentAlex Burghart

    China Spying Case

    The hon. Gentleman will have a perfectly good opportunity to question the people responsible in a few moments’ time. The point is that the Government have been unclear, inconsistent and inaccurate, and we are giving them an opportunity to clear this up right now.

    Hansard source

  38. ParliamentAlex Burghart

    China Spying Case

    The previous Government were clear on a number of occasions that China was a threat, but if the hon. Gentleman had been listening to what I just said, he would have heard that the Director of Public Prosecutions said last week that it was categorically not a question of what the last Government said. Now that I have the hon. Gentleman’s attention, I will repeat for his benefit what the DPP said: that the question was “whether China was—as a matter of fact—an active threat to national security.” It was not a question of policy; it was a matter of fact. [Interruption.] I am not going to go through it a third time.

    Hansard source

  39. ParliamentAlex Burghart

    China Spying Case

    I think there are basically two possible answers to my hon. Friend’s question. The first is that the Government cannot tell their elbow from their posterior; the second is that they do not want this House to know the truth. Either way, on a matter as serious as this, it is incredibly important that we get to the truth. Tonight’s motion presents the Government with an opportunity to be entirely transparent with us and set out the facts of the case as they were at the time—particularly on 1 October, when this all-important meeting took place.

    Hansard source

  40. ParliamentAlex Burghart

    China Spying Case

    My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct, and the Director of Public Prosecutions has been very clear and consistent on that point.

    Hansard source