Speeches by Campbell.

“I certainly join the hon. Gentleman in praise of Armed Forces Day and give the events in Romford our best wishes. It is important that the community can celebrate our armed forces. I imagine that the hon. Gentleman’s area, like mine, has been a recruiting area in the past. I am not going to join him, however, in celebr…”

“I regret to say that I think the right hon. Gentleman is mixing me up with someone else if he thinks I have footballing skills, but I will plough on regardless. Let me be very clear: it is important that we protect our playing fields. We do need houses—homes—so that people can live fulfilling lives, but we also need to…”

“Again, I have no concrete evidence for this— although it is certainly worth considering, and it is not a criticism by any means—but a figure I have quoted before is that 80% of the Members of the House of Commons have less than six years’ experience. I cannot remember a time when there has been such a churn in the numb…”

“That would be entirely inappropriate. It would be wrong, and people would have to be careful they did not fall foul of the other rules of the House. As I said, I have no evidence of that. One feature of modern MPs is that they are much more focused on campaigning than was perhaps the case three decades ago, and I think…”

“One thing that should not change is that Members should be responsible for the questions asked—whether they put them down themselves, or someone in their office acts as a proxy for them. I have no evidence for this, but I worry slightly in case it spread beyond proxies and Members were using parliamentary questions to …”

“I did not use them widely. I would use them as part of a wider campaign and perhaps over a longer period to get information in a timely fashion. That was almost exclusively about constituency matters. I was not necessarily asking the same question, but instead looking at what people were asking about their constituenci…”

“First, thank you for inviting me, and thank you also for your inquiry, which I look forward to seeing the conclusions of, because I think that will inform a wider debate about WPQs. It is really important that Members can ask written parliamentary questions, and I think the fundamental importance, as set out by “Erskin…”

“I am Alan Campbell, Leader of the House.”

“Maybe. It is that lack of consistency, isn’t it? Well, let’s be honest—we will pretend that this is just between us—there are some questions that will go into Departments where you need to be a bit more careful about the answer that you put out there, aren’t there? That is just the reality of the world in which we work…”

“There will certainly be examples of that. That is why I mentioned earlier that I think it is an interesting discussion—although it is up to you—whether there needs to be a distinction. As I said before, it is about getting timely answers. If named day questions are used in order to get quicker answers, we have talked a…”

“I have no doubt that some will be, for the very reason that you have given. I have seen lists of people who have put down questions, and they have just put down named day questions, or 95% of what they are doing is named day questions. As I said before, that may be because they are dealing with that number of cases and…”

“First of all, there shouldn’t be inconsistencies—let me be absolutely clear about that—whether it is a written question or information given under an FOI. But as you say, the Government have recognised that there is inconsistency, and we do again remind Departments of their obligations in this regard. I inquired with m…”

“It could do, but, with respect, it is for this Committee to consider whether that is a good idea. I do not have a hard-and-fast view, because of what I have been alluding to, which is that if I were an MP who wanted an urgent answer, I would be slightly worried if people took the longer timescale as the norm, rather th…”

“It is tricky—there are timelines, and if people fall foul of them they are held to account—but I gently say to colleagues that if there is a rush to get something out the door and it is not really an answer to the question, it will come back. It is a bit short-sighted to take that approach, because it will come back as…”

“I am slightly nervous because I used to get a lot of the questions to answer at the Home Office—clearly, I was not liked by the Home Secretary—[Laughter.]”

“Let me get to that in a moment. I have said that it is a departmental responsibility to do this properly. That should remain, because Departments are part of Government, to some extent, but they have their own independent role to play. As we have said, the Cabinet Office is looking at this, because ultimately it is goi…”

“No, that’s not true. In that situation it was spread across Ministers, and I think that is the right approach to take.”

“Well, I don’t know. Let’s speculate a bit. If one of the purposes of putting a question down is to press for action, could you not construct a question like, “Given what I’ve just read in The Times, I want to know what the Government intend to do about x”?. Would that not pass the bar?”

“No, we don’t; that is absolutely right. That is why there is a balance here. It is not for me to tell you how to do your job, but when the Committee looks at this, I think it is important to establish where that balance is. I am not ducking your question directly, but I suppose I am indirectly. I am not sure that is at…”

“I suppose the easy answer, which might nevertheless be true, is that it is because of the pressure that has built up, given the number of PQs that are coming in. As I have said, there is no doubt that some Departments feel under much more pressure and are having to find a way of dealing with that. The reality is that t…”