Shadow Leader of the House of Commons Jesse Norman criticises the Government’s economic mismanagement with additional employment regulation and tax hikes stifling growth. He also raises serious concerns about the Attorney General's perceived conflict of interest and calls for greater transparency.
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)
Over the past few months, the Labour party has been generous indeed in offering the people of this country regular evidence of its remarkable incompetence, but even by its formidable standards it has excelled itself this week. The Prime Minister said some time ago in terms that he prefers Davos to Westminster, but this week he has left the global hobnobbing and après-ski of the World Economic Forum to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to assist her in her relentless search for growth. Her latest idea is to revive the third runway at Heathrow: a project so toxic to her Labour colleagues that it had been briefed against by the Energy Secretary and publicly rejected by the Mayor of London before it was even preannounced. As so often, I am afraid we will have to wait for the announcement to be made in this House.
Meanwhile, the Chancellor’s wizard wheeze of the autumn to set up a new Office for Value for Money was publicly rubbished in the most unsparing terms by the Chair of the Treasury Committee, the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), who described it as
“an understaffed, poorly defined organisation…set up with a vague remit and no clear plan to measure its effectiveness.”
That is from the Chancellor’s own Labour colleague.
Spending reviews are always fraught, and this one will be still more so, because the Chancellor has boxed herself in so badly on taxes and spending. What the Government think will be achieved by a couple of dozen hastily assembled newbies and some adolescent management consultants running around—apart from making things even worse—is hard to imagine. In case we forget, Mr Speaker, you and I and everyone else in the Chamber—indeed, every taxpayer—is paying for that.
Then we had no less a figure than the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies weighing in. He noted that the Government have done nothing but talk about growth ever since the last general election. He then noted:
“At the same time, we have seen the imposition of additional employment regulation, further regulation of rental housing, a hike in stamp duty, a big increase in tax on employers, an inflation-busting rise in the minimum wage, a refusal to contemplate any serious liberalisation of trade or free movement…and, perhaps, a clampdown on immigration.”
He asked:
“What is this government’s ‘theory of growth’?”
He then answered his own question: “Nobody knows”.
Those are just three examples of the Government’s absolute lack of seriousness in economics, but, as we have just heard in the urgent question, there is a serious issue in the area of law that they cannot avoid. Let me remind the House what has happened. The Attorney General has been repeatedly asked whether he has or has had a conflict of interest in relation to legal matters that could affect his former client, Gerry Adams. In response, a spokesman for the Prime Minister has highlighted systems to prevent potential conflicts from arising. The Attorney General has cited the convention that Law Officers do not discuss their advice to Ministers and has disclaimed any connection between his work for Mr Adams and the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023. As the Solicitor General has just said, the standard that they are aspiring to is to be beyond reproach. The problem is that none of that addresses whether the Attorney General in fact recused himself. This does not fall either within the Law Officers’ convention or the cab rank principle. He either did recuse himself or he did not.
The problem is made worse when one reflects that this Attorney General is the first in the history of the office to have come into Government directly from private practice—that point was completely ignored in the urgent question—and that that practice was not in one of the less political areas of law such as corporate law or chancery but squarely in the highly contentious and political area of human rights, with some of it in Northern Ireland. There is no reason whatever in law or ministerial practice why the Attorney General should not be transparent on this issue, as he has been already in relation to the legacy Act. There is a strong public interest in him doing so. His legacy comment proves that he concedes the point about the importance of clarity in this area.
In the independent adviser on ministerial standards’ recent letter regarding the former anti-corruption Minister, the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Tulip Siddiq), he highlighted that the ministerial code says:
“Ministers…must ensure that no conflict…could reasonably be perceived to arise, between their public duties and their private interests”.
That conflict clearly exists now in relation to the Attorney General. Does the Leader of the House share my view that we should have a debate on the standards to be applied in these complex cases where there is a potential conflict between the demands of the ministerial code and the statements made by the Government in defence of the Law Officer concerned?