Speeches by Burghart.

“I would raise two things about what you have just said. After a kind of pause at the start, I think that the uptick is just representative of the fact that we had a huge number of new MPs in this Parliament who probably—I know from when I was new—took a little time to work out what mechanisms were useful to them in the…”

“As you touched on, when you get poor answers, it encourages you to try again because you believe that the Government are hiding something. When we get answers of the sort that Christopher has just raised, we seek more information, so it generates more work. Also, at the start of a Parliament, when you have new Minister…”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“Neither of us can understand why we would not get a straight answer to that, particularly because I suspect very strongly, based on previous precedent, that if we were to make a freedom of information request for that information, we would receive an answer within 28 days. Having received another non-answer, that is pr…”

“I do not wish to mislead the Committee, but I imagine that was a named day question because, obviously, we had a number of debates in the Chamber that touched on Labour Together and the potential conflict of interest within the propriety and ethics team. I would need to check, but I imagine that I would have seen that …”

“Off the top of my head, Sir Christopher, I do not remember. I am very happy to go away and find out for you.”

“Obviously, there are times when one just wants an answer quickly—because perhaps there is a parliamentary debate coming up, or you have got oral questions or whatever. One is to hit a deadline. I certainly use named day parliamentary questions when I think I am going to have to wait a very long time for an answer. I kn…”

“I will say this now, but it might be relevant to other things that we will talk about later. There is clear disparity in the regimes in that with an FOI there is a clear appeals process. MPs do not have the appeals process if the Government are clearly not fulfilling their obligations to the House. I have no simple sol…”

“We had a case yesterday. We have been asking questions about how money was spent on the refurbishment of Downing Street. They were repeated questions over probably a five-month period saying, “Here’s the budget. We can see it has been spent. What has it been spent on?” We got stonewalled repeatedly, and then we put in …”

“Building on what Wendy just said, if we take a step back and look at how the House expects Ministers to behave, looking in “Erskine May”, the ministerial code and the Nolan principles, there is a very clear duty to be open and accountable. Indeed, it is explicit in the ministerial code, in “Erskine May” and from a 1997…”

“We certainly do. This is a big topic. As you may have seen in my submission, this is a big issue that we are concerned with. It is very useful to have parliamentary questions and the FOI regime, but increasingly we are finding with some Government Departments that we do not get answers through parliamentary questions, …”

“As a Member of Parliament and as a Member of the Front Bench, you obviously have people within the party who are sometimes not in Parliament who suggest parliamentary questions for you to ask, but any question I ask is my question. It will always go through the filter of what my team and I are doing. It would be quite …”

“Thank you very much for the opportunity to give evidence to the Committee. I am grateful to you all for doing this inquiry, because, as I am sure we will uncover over this session, there are necessary improvements that can be made to the way things work. As we all know, written parliamentary questions are a fundamental…”

“I agree with what Wendy said.”

“Does not this case absolutely exemplify why the Government’s solution is entirely wrong? It reopens the door to vexatious litigation, which allows our veterans to be dragged through the courts, even when the courts themselves say that the case is ludicrous. It also exposes the absurdity of the fact that legal aid is pa…”

“The Secretary of State says that there is no such thing as vexatious prosecutions. I think that he would do well to remember the cases of Phil Shiner. In 1991, the SAS shot and killed three members of the IRA’s East Tyrone Brigade in Coagh. The coroner originally found that the soldier’s use of force was reasonable and…”

“I just want to say that the hon. Gentleman is wrong.”

“I thank the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee for its work. The Committee is always incredibly thoughtful and diligent in the prosecution of its duties, and the report has been very interesting. I will try to resist the opportunity to re-litigate the whole troubles Bill and the argument around the legacy Act in the ne…”

“It applied to only one side, and over time that one-sidedness became apparent to lots of people, including veterans. That is why it was important. In 2005, there was no democratic mandate for what the Labour Government tried to do to give immunity to terrorists. What we are trying to do, and what we tried to do in our …”

“Hon. Members will be delighted to hear that I will speak only briefly, because the Opposition do not intend to oppose the legislation. My contribution is already substantially longer than that made by my predecessor, Teddy Taylor, in 1975, when the legislation originally came to the House, who said only 14 words before…”