Speeches by Jones.

“I join my hon. Friend in congratulating his constituents. The Youth Parliament plays an important role in our democracy, and in engaging young people in it. With Mr Speaker’s consent, it has the benefit of coming to this Chamber to experience what it is like. The good news is that we have already had Members of Youth P…”

“May I take this opportunity to welcome the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Test (Satvir Kaur), back from maternity leave? I congratulate the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Frith), on his Dispatch Box debut, and wel…”

“The hon. Lady is right that there is a counter-terror police operation under way, so it would be wrong for me to comment from the Dispatch Box, but I can reassure her and the House that the Government will co-operate fully with that investigation. When we are able to provide further updates, we will do so.”

“No, and no.”

“The hon. Member will remember, from the statement I gave to the House, that we are reviewing this policy area, as well as other areas to do with transparency and lobbying returns, as well as the work of the Ethics and Integrity Commission. We will come forward with further updates in due course.”

“As I have outlined previously, work is ongoing across Departments to identify the material relevant to the Humble Address. Throughout this process, the Government have recognised the urgency and seriousness of fully complying with that Humble Address, and that is why we will publish relevant materials in tranches, the …”

“Since coming into office, this Government have established the Ethics and Integrity Commission to strengthen standards across the public sector. The Prime Minister has strengthened the independent adviser’s ability to open investigations into ministerial misconduct, and with the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, we …”

“If the hon. Gentleman is making reference to his previous question, he asked me if the appointment was in breach of the rules, to which I said no. As I have said to the House in answer to previous questions, the appointment of the head of propriety and ethics is on an interim basis, which is fully in line with the rule…”

“I will take the question away, Mr Speaker.”

“The Cabinet Office and Government Departments are in the process of concluding their business planning processes before the start of the new fiscal year, so an update will be available very soon.”

“I think there are lots of services that we could make much easier and integrate more in the app, such as the DVLA, tax or getting your MOT information and paperwork presented to you in one place when it is due, as well as your driving licence or paying money to HMRC—or even getting some back, if you are lucky. There ar…”

“Quite frankly, it is mad that you currently have companies verifying the identity of people but, if they think there are problems, they do not currently share that information with us because we do not have anywhere to put it. That is slightly barmy. My hope is that we will build a system where, whether you are verifyi…”

“There is a wider benefit as well. We know that fraud more generally is a huge issue and a huge strain on our police service. I am sure we have all had constituents who have lost money fraudulently online in some way, and they get pointed to Action Fraud, where it just gets reported as a statistic. The police do not oft…”

“I think Parliament would have to legislate for the public to have that. My hope, though, from a user experience, is that if you are logging into the gov.uk app with your digital ID in a number of years’ time, and some of these services are coming into the app, you will, in practice, just use one thing to get into the s…”

“Sure, but there has always been freedom for citizens to decide whether they wish to do it or not, as opposed to us saying, “This is what you must do.””

“I think it is just because historically we have never had a mandatory Government-issued identity in this country in the way that some other European countries may do. We have had the freedom to have a passport if we wish to have one or not, or a driving licence if we have qualified or not.”

“Digital identity, as I say, will not be a login. It will be a legal identity in its own right. I see no reason in the long term why, through the app, you cannot have just one place where your information is, whether you choose to have access to certain services or not and whether you therefore wish to use that legal id…”

“The benefit of consultation is that we can take those views on. Of course a passport does last for 10 years, so it is only once every 10 years that would need to be done.”

“My understanding is it would be the user’s responsibility to update that.”

“I would assume so, but we are not at the stage of being able to answer that because we need to consult on it.”