I thank Kirsty Blackman for securing this urgent question. All of us in this Chamber were elected to represent our constituents and to put the interests of the country first, and to do that we must be able to scrutinise the Government’s plans and policies. The best way to do that is in this Chamber and as soon as possible, so we are disappointed that they have chosen to make announcements in this way.

We also note that this is not the first time. The Shadow Leader of the House has mentioned various examples, and I would like to add some more. On the NHS, for example, the Government have, without any statement in the Chamber, made key decisions such as dropping cross-party talks on social care, cutting integrated care board budgets by 50% and scrapping nearly half of NHS targets. The question must be: why are the Government so worried about bringing these issues to the Floor first?