Chris Philp
MP for Croydon South · Conservative · United Kingdom
“The Minister mentioned return numbers, but what she did not mention is that the return of 6,000 small-boat migrants in the past two and a bit years amounts to only 8% of illegal immigrants crossing the channel. That is to say, 92% of illegal immigrants crossing get to stay. There is no deterrent whatsoever in that.”
“I cannot give all the many examples, in the interests of time, but they cited one example in which apparently hundreds of Pakistani men claimed to be gay, based on a letter from an individual claiming to be the sexual partner of all of them. That is quite clearly fabricated with the assistance of immigration lawyers.”
“I was on the beaches of northern France just a few weeks ago, waist deep in water as one such dinghy embarked with about 100 illegal immigrants on it, while 10 members of the French gendarmerie nationale, who we pay for—who the Home Secretary pays for—with £660 million of our money, almost all of it unconditional, stood by and did nothing…”
“Numerous rapes have been committed by small-boat illegal immigrants, including the rape of a girl in Nuneaton aged just 12. The Government are using sleight of hand. They are moving illegal immigrants from hotels into apartments, then granting them asylum on an industrial scale.”
“I thank my constituency neighbour, the Minister for Policing and Crime, for advance sight of her statement. I am sure that we all agree that the right to protest is a fundamental part of our democracy, but the right to protest should never be violently exercised or cause serious disruption to other people.”
“Since the general election, over 80,000 illegal immigrants have crossed the channel, all illegally and all unnecessarily, because France is a safe country—nobody is fleeing persecution in France. Almost 20,000 have crossed this year alone, and 625 crossed yesterday, with more coming in the early hours.”
The complete record
Every one of 6,642 lines we hold for Chris Philp, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 4 of 133.
“Do the Government really think it is acceptable that the threat of antisemitic mob violence can dictate policy? That is morally wrong and should never be allowed to happen in this country.”
“Disturbingly, two members of the safety advisory group, Waseem Zaffar and Mumtaz Hussain, both previously expressed vehement anti-Israel views, so they were not impartial. We have seen the Palestine solidarity campaign in Birmingham trying to hunt down Maccabi players before the game—that is despicable. When my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) went to the game, he was abused and called a “dog” by pro-Palestine protesters, thereby revealing their true colours. We have now discovered through a written answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Droitwich and Evesham (Nigel Huddleston) that the Home Office was made aware of the possibility of the ban as early as 2 October—a full two weeks before the decision was taken. Why did the Home Office then do nothing to ensure that Maccabi fans could be properly protected?”
“Last month, Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were banned under the threat of antisemitic mob violence and a highly politicised anti-Israel campaign. Let me be clear: we must never allow the threat of mob violence to dictate policy. West Midlands police cited concerns about the Tel Aviv fans based on a previous game in Amsterdam, but the Dutch police have now shown that those concerns were completely false. There was no mob of 500 fans targeting the Muslim community in Amsterdam. In fact, many Maccabi fans were themselves attacked. Nobody was thrown in a river, apart from one Maccabi fan. The Maccabi fans were not skilled and organised fighters; that was just made up. What will the Government do to hold West Midlands police to account for providing that false information? Unless they have a good explanation, the chief constable should resign.”
“I urge her to draft those rules carefully and to be extremely cautious, lest she creates some loopholes. Will the Home Secretary consider adopting one last Conservative policy, since she appears so enthusiastic about them, by introducing a binding cap on legal migration? It could be voted for by Parliament each year so that this House can democratically decide the level of inward migration. She has adopted so many of our other policies, and I strongly urge her to adopt that last one too.”
“The Home Secretary also says that to qualify for ILR at 10 years, people will need to have made national insurance contributions. I have tried to get through the consultation document in the past half hour, and I think I am right in saying that the qualifying threshold is to have earned £12,570 for a period of three years. She can correct me if I have got that wrong, but that strikes me as a very low level of earnings—some £12,500 for three years would not represent a net economic contribution to this country—and I urge her seriously to consider setting the threshold a great deal higher. The Home Secretary also mentions the possibility of volunteering meaning that people get ILR at five years, rather than 10. We know how people game the system when it comes to immigration, such as by pretending to convert to Christianity to get asylum.”
“I have one or two detailed and specific questions, which I ask in a spirit of constructiveness, given that the Home Secretary has adopted so many Conservative policies. Importantly, she said that these policies on ILR qualification would apply to those people here already. She is absolutely right to say that, and I support it. She mentions transitional arrangements. I just urge her to be cautious about those, lest they create loopholes. Can she give the House an estimate as to when these new measures will be implemented? I think the previous rules around legal migration took effect in January 2021, so the people who arrived under them will become eligible under present ILR rules from January 2026—just a few weeks’ time. When will these changes be implemented? I hope it is as soon as possible.”
“Where I suspect we and the Government agree is that very limited, high-skilled migration is a good thing, but the days of mass, low-skilled migration must come to an end. There is much in this statement that I support, not least because so much of it is so familiar. The idea of a 10-year route to indefinite leave to remain is something that we proposed in amendments to the Government’s Bill around nine months ago. Inexplicably, the Labour party voted against those measures, and now they have adopted them. We also proposed removing benefits from foreign citizens, including those on ILR who do not have British citizenship, and this consultation document now looks at doing the same thing. I am delighted to see that the Home Secretary, upon arrival at 2 Marsham Street, got out her laptop and started copying and pasting Conservative policies.”
“The number of illegal immigrants accommodated in hotels has gone up under this Labour Government, even though they promised they would reduce numbers. Besides illegal immigration, on which this Government are so clearly failing, legal migration has been far too high, too, absorbing the equivalent of half the new housing supply in recent years. Allowing mass low-skilled migration is bad for the economy, not least when we have 9.5 million working-age people out of work. Mass low- skilled migration without integration has placed all kinds of pressures on society, not least because there are a million people here who do not speak English properly or at all and 10,000 foreign citizens in prison.”
“As always, I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of her statement. She has had a busy week. I wonder whether this burst of hyperactivity has anything to do with her leadership bid. As her shadow, I will say this: I am rooting for her in her tussle with the Health Secretary as to who gets to replace the Prime Minister, although I fear my endorsement may not be entirely helpful to her! Immigration under successive Governments has been far too high. That has included illegal immigration across the channel, which has surged since the general election, with 10,000 illegal immigrants crossing just in the 75 days that the Home Secretary has been in post. Last year—the first year of a Labour Government—there were a record number of new asylum claims.”
“Well, it is good to see the Home Secretary here, taking some time off from her leadership campaign. She is quite clearly preparing a one in, one out policy for No. 10 Downing Street! The Home Secretary has announced that she wants to replace the Government’s entire immigration policy with Denmark’s. Is that because the Government have failed so badly in the year and a half since the election? Since the election, illegal channel crossings have surged 55%, up to 62,000; new asylum claims have reached record levels; and the numbers in asylum hotels have gone up. In just 75 days, since the right hon. Lady became Home Secretary, 10,000 illegal immigrants have crossed the English channel, but the Home Secretary—”
“Okay, I will ask a question. Will the Home Secretary agree with us that in order to control our borders we must come out of the European convention on human rights, enabling us to deport all illegal immigrants within a week of their arrival?”
“Our leader is not going anywhere, but the right hon. Lady’s leader most certainly is—out of No. 10! The Home Secretary talks about the Rwanda scheme. That scheme never even started. It worked in Australia and it would have worked here. After her Government cancelled it with no replacement, numbers have surged. The truth is that under this Government, illegal immigration has gone up, and there is a crime wave going up with it, including rape and murder. Her ideas are not radical enough. She wants to give illegal immigrants a 20-year path to citizenship—”
“The Home Secretary wants to give illegal immigrants a 20-year path to citizenship. We want to deport them. Will she accept our proposal to come out of the ECHR so that we can actually control our borders?”
“Last October, a Sudanese small-boat illegal immigrant murdered 27-year-old Rhiannon Whyte by stabbing her 23 times with a screwdriver. In September, an illegal immigrant from Egypt was jailed for brutally raping a young woman in Hyde Park. Just last week, an Iranian and two Egyptian small-boat illegal immigrants were committed to trial for the rape of a 33-year-old woman on Brighton beach. How many more murders and rapes must there be before the Home Secretary agrees to the immediate deportation of all illegal immigrants within a week of arrival?”
“As far as I can see, this proposal will not save any money, but will remove a directly elected public official—the police and crime commissioner—who is accountable to the public and would certainly be more visible than some faceless committee of local bureaucrats. That is a retrograde step. In the Government’s announcement today, they are tinkering around the edges. They are rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic while crimes such as shoplifting rocket, police numbers fall and the police face a funding crisis made in the Home Office.”
“Knife crime is up 86% under Sadiq Khan, and the Met has the lowest clear-up rate of any force in the country at a lamentable 4.7%. He has closed down half the front counters in London, and police numbers are plummeting. How can the Minister make such an assertion? For areas outside mayoralties, the Minister proposes essentially to abolish PCCs and replace them with some kind of committee comprised of local councillors. Will those have the same powers as police and crime commissioners? It is implied that they will, and if so, it will not save any money, other than from the election and the police and crime panel, which are very small costs.”
“It is clear that this Government are failing on police and crime, with falling police numbers, increasing crime and a funding crisis, yet the Policing Minister comes to us today with some minor tinkering around the edges. The Government say that they want to transfer PCC powers to mayors where they exist and where the territories are coterminous. Broadly speaking, that is the approach the previous Government took. In fact, I recall transferring one of the Yorkshire forces, I think, into the mayoral model a year or so ago. She asserts that the mayoral model is superior to regular police and crime commissioners, and I wonder what evidence she can produce to support that, because the biggest police and crime commissioner in the country is the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who is also the worst PCC in the country.”
“Police numbers are not only continuing to fall, but will drop even more this year. Crime under this Government is surging: shoplifting is up by 13% in this Government’s first year to record levels, leaving shopkeepers in difficulty, and we have seen theft from the person going up by 5% and sexual offences going up by 9%. If it were not enough to see all those crime types surging under this Labour Government, senior police officers are warning that they face a funding crisis. Indeed, the chief constables of our four largest forces—Merseyside, the West Midlands, Greater Manchester and the Metropolitan police—all said publicly just a few months ago that they face a funding crisis under this Labour Government.”
“I thank the Minister for advance sight of her statement. The Minister mentioned at the beginning the Government’s plans to bring forward a police reform White Paper. That was announced, from memory, about a year ago, but there has not been a single sniff of that White Paper. Can she tell us when we can expect it and why the Government are so bereft of ideas that they have taken a year or more to publish it? Today’s statement about police and crime commissioners represents tinkering around the edges from a Government who are failing on crime and policing. They are simply rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. This Government are failing. Police numbers are falling. They fell by 1,300 during Labour’s first year in office on a like-for-like, March-to-March comparison.”
“The House and the public are entitled to be told about such things, but the Deputy Prime Minister withheld that information. The police have subsequently confirmed that they have no objection to that information being released, contrary to briefings from the Government. Will the Justice Secretary come to this House before the close of business and make a statement so that Members can question him? We cannot wait until the House returns on Tuesday for a proper account.”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, at Prime Minister’s questions earlier today, the Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) no fewer than five times whether he was aware of any prisoner being released early, having claimed asylum. We now know that he had in his possession at that time a folder containing details of the accidental release of Brahim Kaddour-Cherif from Wandsworth prison last week—a man previously convicted of sex offences and who is, as we speak, at large and posing a risk to the public. It has emerged since then that another man, William Smith, was accidentally released on Monday. The Deputy Prime Minister failed to disclose that relevant information to this House.”
“I really hope that the Home Secretary and the Minister for Policing agree that rolling out this technology nationally would make a dramatic improvement to public safety, and they will certainly have my full support if they choose to roll it out. I know that everyone in the House wants to see knife crime eradicated—today more than ever before, I am sure—so I hope the House will also support the tough steps needed to eradicate knife crime. We owe the victims of these appalling crimes actions as well as words.”
“I wonder if the Home Secretary could provide an update on the development of that work, either straightaway or in writing later if she would prefer. I really do think that it could make a big difference. Finally, retrospective and live facial recognition can identify wanted criminals, including those involved in knife crime. In Croydon town centre—the borough that the Minister for Policing and I represent—in the last couple of years around 200 wanted criminals were arrested using live facial recognition, including two wanted rapists and others guilty of knife crime who would not otherwise have been caught. Crime in Croydon town centre, including knife crime, has gone down as a result. The images of innocent passers-by are immediately and automatically deleted, which addresses civil liberties concerns.”
“Some complain that stop and search is used disproportionately in relation to some groups, but, when measured in relation to the offending population, the disproportionality disappears, as was set out in a recent Policy Exchange study. We should triple the use of stop and search to get knives off our streets, and we should introduce year-round surge policing in the top 5% of high crime hotspots, which will include many train stations. We must also use technology more. I know that there is work under way at the Home Office on scanning for knives at a distance, and it is hoped that it can distinguish knives from keys or mobile phones. This could help police rapidly identify those carrying a knife in a public place.”
“This is important because when offenders are in jail, they cannot attack the public. Does she agree that we must ensure that more people who carry knives, especially where they use them to threaten others, are jailed? Of course, there is pressure on prison places, but by deporting more of the 10,000 foreign nationals in prison, we could create more space. We also need to take more knives off our streets, which means we have to dramatically increase the use of stop and search. A study this year by Professor Lawrence Sherman, the Met’s former chief scientific officer, found that raising stop and search levels in London to 2011 levels would lead to a one-third reduction in knife homicide.”
“This all comes just weeks after a murderous Islamist terror attack on a Manchester synagogue and just days after the horrendous murder of Wayne Broadhurst by an Afghan asylum seeker, both using knives. Although homicide has thankfully fallen by about 15% since 2010 and, as the Home Secretary said, knife crime has fallen in recent years, every homicide and every knife attack is one too many. The Minister for Policing and I saw the grief it causes at the funeral of 15-year-old Elianne Andam, who was murdered in Croydon just over two years ago. Speaking in general—not in relation to this incident—does the Home Secretary agree that knife crime and knife homicide figures are still too high, and that we must do yet more? Does she agree that more knife crime offenders should go to jail?”
“As the Home Secretary says, he had been involved in previous incidents in Peterborough and, in the early hours of Saturday morning, was also allegedly involved in an attack on the docklands light railway in London. Will the Home Secretary confirm that, as I have been told, police in London knew Williams’s identity following that attack, and if so, whether Cambridgeshire police were informed so that they could track him down? In essence, I am asking whether there were any opportunities to prevent this attack from occurring. The Home Secretary says that Williams was not previously known to the security services, Counter Terrorism Policing or Prevent. Can she tell the House whether Williams was previously known to the police more widely or to mental health services?”
“I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of her statement. Our thoughts are with the victims of this appalling attack and their families, as the Home Secretary rightly says. I join her in paying tribute to the emergency services who responded so fast and the brave interventions by members of the public and the train staff that prevented an even worse tragedy from occurring. They are truly heroes. This attack has horrified and shocked the whole nation. People simply travelling by train were indiscriminately attacked. The horror the passengers experienced will likely stay with them forever. Anthony Williams has now been charged.”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I think the Home Secretary may have misheard me during my question. I was saying that I was not concerned about the disproportionality of stop and search, because when we compare its use with the offending population, there is no disproportionality. I was encouraging further use of the tactic. I wanted to make sure the Home Secretary had heard and received that message.”
“The Minister has said twice in the last minute that the question was the policy of the last Government. Let me take him to page 4 of the letter from the Director of Public Prosecutions, dated Thursday of last week. In that letter, the DPP said—”
“The DPP said the opposite of what the Minister has said. He said that the issue was a question of fact, and not—categorically not—the policy of the last Government.”
“Is it because they are more interested in getting some sort of economic bailout from the Chinese, to fix the mess they have created, than they are in our national security? That is the question they need to answer. If this House and the country are to understand exactly what happened with this case, we need full transparency and full disclosure: the minutes of those meetings, the actions arising from them, and the correspondence with the CPS. If they really want transparency—as the Minister for the Cabinet Office said earlier—all they have to do is support this motion and put this material where it belongs: in the public domain.”
“Why did they choose not to do that? Members of this Parliament have been spied on by a hostile state: a state that has stolen intellectual property on an industrial scale, both covertly and through acquisition; a state that plans to build a large embassy, probably for espionage purposes among other things; a state that has opened secret police stations; a state that has put bounties on the heads of people living in the United Kingdom; and a state that has actively supported Russia in its war against Ukraine. The Government could not produce evidence that it was an active and current threat, even though I think it is quite clear to everyone in this Chamber that it was. Why did the Government not provide the evidence they were asked to provide at least nine times?”
“It is quite clear that the Government, had they wanted to, could have intervened between 3 September, when the Cabinet Secretary was informed and was given permission to inform Ministers, and the meeting on 9 September, six days later, when the CPS tried, one last time—at least the ninth time—to get the evidence it needed, but, once again, it was not forthcoming. Did the Government have any discussions in that period, between 3 and 9 September, about further evidence that they might have provided? If they did not, why not? A few simple words were all that were needed—words not about the previous Government’s policy, but about the facts as they stood on the ground. I uttered those words just a few minutes ago—it was simple enough—and if this Government had said what I said a few minutes ago, this case would have proceeded.”
“The DPP also said in page 6 of his letter: “It was agreed that” the Cabinet Secretary “might inform a limited group, including some ministers.” I therefore ask the Security Minister to tell the House now which Ministers were informed pursuant to that meeting on 3 September, and whether they took any action as a result—for example, deciding to provide better evidence, which they could have done. It was recently reported in The Sunday Times that the Home Secretary got wind of this around that time, and decided to try to intervene. I did ask the Security Minister this in an urgent question last week, and many of my hon. Friends did as well, but he did not answer the question, so perhaps he now can: when did the Home Secretary become aware of the collapse of the trial? Did she try to intervene? If so, how?”
“So Mr Collins went into that meeting on 1 September, most likely knowing that the case was unlikely to proceed. Was that discussed? Was the possibility of providing more evidence discussed in that meeting? We do not know. That is why the minutes need to be published. We know for a fact that, on 3 September, the Director of Public Prosecutions informed the Cabinet Secretary and the DNSA that the case was not going to be proceeding on the evidence as it stood.”
“Now we come to the meeting of 1 September, a meeting that the Home Secretary, quoted in The Telegraph on 5 October, claimed did not happen. Well, we now know that it did happen. What we do not know, however, is precisely what was discussed at that meeting. We have not seen the minutes of it, and we do not know the actions arising from it. We do know that it was chaired by Jonathan Powell, the National Security Adviser. We know that many people were there. We know that the deputy National Security Adviser, Matt Collins, was there. We also know that on 14 August, two and a half weeks before that meeting, he attended a conference that included the First Treasury Counsel, at which it became clear that Mr Collins would not change his evidence, and the case would therefore collapse.”
“It was not the case that, as the Minister claimed, he could not comment on why the case had collapsed, as if he did not know about it, because on no fewer than nine different occasions, according to the DPP, the Crown Prosecution Service pleaded with the Government—begged the Government—to say those simple words that I said a couple of minutes ago and the Government, over two years, refused to say. In June 2024, December 2024, February 2025, May 2025, July 2025—twice, on 3 and 10 July—August 2025, 3 September 2025 and 9 September 2025, the CPS begged the Government to say those simple words, and the Government would not say them. Why exactly was the Security Minister acting all surprised on 15 September, claiming that he did not know what was going on, when on nine separate occasions the CPS had pleaded with the Government?”
“He said: “We were looking to the DNSA to provide evidence of the actual threat…and not what government policy was.” The DPP has said that categorically in writing and in evidence yesterday. What the Prime Minister said was misleading, and I ask this Minister, the Security Minister, to retract it on the Prime Minister’s behalf. Moreover, the Security Minister himself said on 15 September that the collapse of the case had come as a big surprise to the Government, and that they heard about it only that morning. He said: “the decision was communicated this morning”. —[ Official Report , 15 September 2025; Vol. 772, c. 1187.] That, I am afraid, was not true. The decision was communicated on 3 September at the latest, and it most certainly did not come as a surprise to the Government.”
“For example, the Prime Minister claimed in India, on 7 October, that what mattered in this case was the previous Government’s designation of China. He said it again, from that Dispatch Box, on 15 October. He said that the issue was the position of the last Government, and the Paymaster General said it again in his opening speech. That claim, made by the Prime Minister and made again by the Paymaster General earlier today, is categorically untrue. We know it is untrue because on page 4 of his letter, the Director of Public Prosecutions said it was untrue. He said: “The test was therefore positively not what the then Government was prepared to… say in public…whether framed as…policy or otherwise…but…whether China was—as a matter of fact—an active threat to national security.” He said it again in evidence yesterday.”
““In my opinion, China poses an active and current threat to the United Kingdom.” That is all that the Government needed to say to the Crown Prosecution Service in order to secure this conviction, and yet they did not. As recently as 12 days ago, the director general of M15 said that China posed a daily threat. In July 2022, he and his FBI counterpart said that China was posing a growing threat. The former Security Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat), said it in April 2024, from that Dispatch Box, and the July 2021 integrated review said that China posed the “biggest state-based threat to the UK’s economic security.” It is pretty simple. I have said it, and the Government could have said it, but they did not. The Government’s commentary on this case has been evasive and sometimes misleading.”
“(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary to make a statement on the recent criticism of the statutory inquiry into the rape gang scandal.”
“Will the Minister confirm that the scope of the inquiry will not be diluted, as both Fiona and Ellie-Ann say is now happening, and that it will focus on the cover-up of the rape gangs scandal because of the fact that the majority of perpetrators were of Pakistani origin? Finally, Fiona said this yesterday: “I just won’t be gagged and controlled by the Government while they turn this inquiry into a cover up.” Will the Minister apologise to Fiona and Ellie-Ann?”
“Just two years ago, Ms Kaiser described calling out the fact that the majority of perpetrators were of Pakistani heritage as “destructive, distracting, irresponsible”. Given those frankly appalling views and the complaints about them by survivors, will the Minister ensure that Ms Kaiser plays no further role? Victims and survivors have also questioned the suitability of former police officers or social workers to chair the inquiry. They do not believe that people from the professions that failed them so badly are suitable. Will the Minister accept this feedback and appoint a judge to lead the inquiry?”
“What we have heard publicly is that victims and survivors on the liaison panel have no confidence in the Government or the inquiry. In the last 24 hours alone, two have resigned. Fiona Goddard resigned from the panel, saying that “the secretive conduct and conditions imposed on survivors” —by the Government— “has led to a toxic, fearful environment, and there is a high risk of people feeling silenced all over again.” Hours later, Ellie-Ann Reynolds also resigned, saying that the remit of the inquiry had been widened to “downplay the racial and religious motivations behind our abuse.” The Minister shakes her head, but that is what Ellie-Ann Reynolds said. Fiona also raised the issue of Sabah Kaiser, who has been acting as a liaison officer on behalf of NWG.”
“This scandal arose because young, mainly white girls were systematically gang-raped and it was covered up by those in authority because the perpetrators were mainly of Pakistani origin. It is all the more shocking that when calls for a national inquiry became public in January, the Prime Minister smeared campaigners as “jumping on a far-right bandwagon”. Comments like that are a disgrace and are what led to this scandal being covered up in the first place. Months later, just two days before facing a vote in Parliament, the Government finally agreed to the inquiry, but it is clear that they never wanted this inquiry and were forced into it. Perhaps that is why, months later, the Government have said nothing substantive publicly and their inquiry is descending into chaos.”
“Why have the Government been providing this House with inaccurate information, and why did Ministers know what the CPS wanted but refuse to give it to the CPS?”
“The Sunday Times also reported that the DNSA is understood to have acknowledged privately that the decision not to say that China is an ongoing threat was political in nature. Is that true? Finally, the current Government’s position has been that all the evidence provided related to the previous Government’s policy, but we now know that that is categorically not true. In paragraph 8 of Matt Collins’s third statement, from August this year, which he copied and pasted from the Labour manifesto, he stressed the importance the current Government attach to a “positive relationship” with China, weakening the evidence compared with 2023 and bringing in current Government policy, contrary to what we have been told in recent weeks.”
“Is it true that Jonathan Powell chaired that meeting? Did that meeting discuss the CPS view that the evidence provided to that point was inadequate, and the possibility of providing further evidence in the case? Will the Minister agree to publish the minutes of all meetings in which this case was discussed and the correspondence relating to it? The Sunday Times reported that following the meeting, the Attorney General’s Office was asked to speak to the CPS. Did anyone from the AGO speak directly or indirectly to the CPS after that meeting? Can the Minister confirm that Dan Chugg from the Foreign Office was at the 1 September meeting, and that it was the same Dan Chugg who approached the Lord Speaker with a proposed deal in which the Chinese ambassador would be allowed back into Parliament?”
“Last Wednesday, the Prime Minister told this House that no Minister or special adviser was involved in the handling of the China spy case, yet The Sunday Times has since reported that the Home Secretary had “heard that the case might collapse and had made representations to ensure the evidence put forward was as ‘strong as possible’.” So I ask the Minister: when did the Home Secretary become aware that the case might collapse, and what representations did she or her proxies make about the evidence and to whom? Why has the House been told—including just now—that Ministers and advisers were not involved in any way when The Sunday Times reports that they were? The Sunday Times also reported on a key meeting that took place on 1 September—a meeting that the Government originally denied took place.”