Matthew Pennycook: For the purpose of clarity, if the Cabinet Office inquiry into allegations that the Home Secretary breached the ministerial code establishes that her conduct fell below the standard expected of a Minister in any way and on any occasion, can the Prime Minister confirm that she will be expected to resign or be removed from office?
Matthew Pennycook: In the light of the Minister’s remarks on a level playing field, can I ask him about competition policy and governance arrangements? Would the Government accept commitments on workers’ rights, environmental protections and consumer and social standards being subject to any dispute resolution mechanism agreed to as part of the wider agreement?
Matthew Pennycook: What recent progress the Government have made on negotiating the UK’s future relationship with the EU.
Matthew Pennycook: When it comes to the negotiations that will begin next week, no one knows what the Government’s bottom line is, and we will not find out until later this year, but will the Minister explain to the House today why on earth the Government believe that the reputational damage that will be inflicted, not just in EU capitals but around the world, by our casual reneging on a number of...
Matthew Pennycook: What recent discussions his Department has had with Southeastern on the adequacy of its rail services.
Matthew Pennycook: I thank the Minister for his response. He will know that reliability is still a problem on the line and that for many years I have pressed his Department to hand responsibility for Southeastern services to Transport for London to ensure that passengers in my constituency get the high standard of service that those who use London Overground receive. I know that his immediate priority will be...
Matthew Pennycook: The Secretary of State referenced the new industry-wide valuation process that was announced in December. Will he tell the House whether the Government have formally endorsed the new EWS1—external wall system—process? Have he or his officials had any evidence that it is working to resolve the problems that leaseholders in high-rise buildings face in selling or re-mortgaging their...
Matthew Pennycook: Whether he plans to review the operation of the pupil premium.
Matthew Pennycook: The House of Commons Library has confirmed to me that there has been a £220 million real-terms decrease in the total amount of spending on the pupil premium since 2015. Schools in my constituency have together lost about £1 million, with the worst-affected losing almost £40,000 a year. In its recent manifesto, the Conservative party did not repeat its previous commitment to protect the...
Matthew Pennycook: The JCPOA has been mentioned several times this afternoon. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the UK Government’s position is that there are no immediate grounds to trigger the dispute mechanism in that agreement?
Matthew Pennycook: I intend to be as brief as I can, not least because the Bill before us is, in essence, the one that we debated in principle back in October. I also do not intend to delve into the various ways in which the Government have revised the legislation and abandoned their previous commitments on workers’ rights, parliamentary scrutiny and oversight, and child refugees. There will be time enough...
Matthew Pennycook: As with the Malthouse compromise and the Brady amendment, it is difficult to look at these proposals and not conclude that those on the Government Benches are almost exclusively talking to themselves. But taking the proposals at face value, does the Prime Minister accept that even if they do form the basis—however unlikely—for a deal, there is no way that the arrangements set out in this...
Matthew Pennycook: Over the last 15 minutes, the Minister has been at pains to stress the distinction between technical non- papers and final papers which are forthcoming. On the basis of that distinction, may I therefore ask him a simple question: without going into the detail, can he give the House an assurance that any final proposals that relate to the Irish border will not row back in any way from any of...
Matthew Pennycook: What recent assessment he has made of the financial sustainability of private higher education providers.
Matthew Pennycook: I thank the Secretary of State for his answer. Greenwich School of Management is unlikely to be the last private higher education provider to go bust in a system where market forces are the ultimate determinant of success, but it is of course the students and staff who pay the price. Can he tell me how many of the 3,500 GSM students—who are overwhelmingly mature, on low incomes and from...
Matthew Pennycook: The Secretary of State has said once again that the new Administration want to secure a deal, rather than leave without one, yet we know that no new concrete proposals have been presented to the EU. It has been reported that in the technical talks that took place yesterday between the UK’s chief negotiator and EU Commission officials, the UK team made it clear that the Government want to...
Matthew Pennycook: There was no answer there on the level playing field provisions. I am not sure why the Secretary of State is so reluctant to confirm that regulatory divergence from the EU, rather than alignment with it, is what the Government want to achieve. After all, as he mentioned, in the Prime Minister’s letter to Donald Tusk on 19 August that was for him “the point” of our exit. We have gone...
Matthew Pennycook: What steps he is taking to ensure that his Department’s immigration policies do not unfairly discriminate on the basis of (a) race and (b) nationality.
Matthew Pennycook: The Department’s own statistics make it clear that last year’s average refusal rate for entry visas from Nigeria was 37%, and almost 44% for entry visas from Ghana, compared with an average refusal rate of only 12% across all countries. Can the Minister explain to my west African-born constituents, whose family members, friends and ministers of religion are being refused visitor visas in...
Matthew Pennycook: In the finest traditions of this Government, the Brexit Secretary used an interview in The Times today to publicly air his frustrations with colleagues from the Treasury and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy at their unwillingness to waste yet more public money on ramping up preparations for a no-deal Brexit. In the same spirit of openness, can the Minister tell the...
