YouSaid · the spoken record
David Davis
We hold 81 passages that may be David Davis’s. We do not publish them until we can confirm who spoke. See the correction.
On the record 2004–2026
hansard · podcast
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“Professor Shoo Lee’s panel identified that 10 infants were receiving antibiotics, and court proceedings identified another three. The fact that at least 13 babies were treated with antibiotics suggests that the clinicians considered infection to be a real possibility in these cases. On top of that, MRSA, C. difficile and MSSA were detected across the trust; it is not known whether they were present in the neonatal intensive care unit. While giving evidence at her own trial, Miss Letby told jurors that the neonatal unit had problems with “raw sewage” coming from sinks. That was not an invention in the hopes of abdicating responsibility; contemporaneous messages between staff show that these concerns were raised at the time. Remember: this was a neonatal intensive care unit.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Pseudomonas forms a biofilm—a layer that allows the bacteria to spread within a water system—and can kill newborns. In 2012, at Belfast’s Royal Jubilee maternity hospital, three premature babies died from it. In an effort to mitigate the risks of Pseudomonas, the Countess of Chester installed filters on the taps, but the filters kept falling off. Another of the babies Letby is said to have murdered was found to have Stenotrophomonas maltophilia in their breathing tube—a bug responsible for some of the deaths at Glasgow’s scandal-hit Queen Elizabeth University hospital. Of the 17 babies Lucy Letby is said to have murdered or attempted to murder, at least 14 babies either had an infection or were suspected to have an infection.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The consultants also reported that in the two months since the change infants have been sick but recovered as expected.” The report highlighted deficiencies in staffing levels, leadership and communication, but, in the trial, it was not shown to the jury—they knew nothing of it. In July 2016, the unit was downgraded and Lucy Letby left the ward. It is irrational to assume that one of those two events was entirely responsible for the sharp reduction in deaths without testing the other event properly. The inquiry must examine both changes to determine which made the difference. During 2015 and 2016, when the neonatal mortality rates spiked, the hospital faced infection control problems. One nurse described the unit as her “worst nightmare”. Pseudomonas aeruginosa had colonised taps in the nurseries of the neonatal unit.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Indeed, it is often claimed that babies on the unit stopped dying as soon as Letby was removed from the ward. That assertion ignores perhaps the most critical fact. In July 2016, when Letby was removed from the ward, the neonatal unit was finally downgraded to a level 1. In that moment, the risk profile changed. Fewer of the sickest babies were admitted at the Countess. The 2016 Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health report is clear that since the redesignation from level 2 to level 1, the pressure “has reduced and the unit is operating more in line with BAPM staffing standards.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Staff at the time certainly thought so. One nurse warned the unit manager, “something awful is going to happen here...we can’t carry on like this”. In late 2015, one consultant said the unit was so busy that it was running out of vital equipment, adding: “This is now our normal working pattern and it is not safe. Things are...at breaking point. When things snap, the casualties will either be children’s lives or the...health of our staff.” The spike in baby deaths was that breaking point. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health report from November 2016 confirmed that the unit was “non-compliant on nurse and medical staffing levels” when assessed against service standards for a level 2 unit. It ought to have been downgraded further, to a level 1.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There was little space, cots and incubators were stored in corridors, and mothers struggled to find somewhere to breastfeed their babies. Susan Gilby, the hospital’s chief executive between 2018 and 2022, later described the unit as “dark, dingy and cramped”, providing a “less than ideal” environment to work in. Remember, this was a level 2 neonatal unit tasked with providing short-term intensive care for fragile babies. Indeed, the deficiencies were so serious that the trust launched a £3 million public fundraising campaign to pay for a new neonatal unit because the necessary capital funding was not available through the NHS. This was an acknowledgment that the unit was not fit for purpose. The inquiry ought to ask: was the unit being asked to deliver a level of care that it was not capable of providing?”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There are three levels of care in neonatal units, depending on the complexity of care that a unit is equipped to provide. Appropriate grading of a neonatal unit is fundamental to patient safety. Level 1 units accept babies with low care needs. Level 3 units accept babies needing the highest level of medical care. The Countess of Chester was a level 3 unit throughout the early 2000s, but in 2005 it was downgraded to level 2, an admittance that the unit could not handle level 3 babies. But the unit continued to operate under immense strain, worsened by management’s decision to get rid of its hugely experienced advanced neonatal nurse practitioners. Years later, when Lucy Letby started at the Countess in 2012, conditions remained poor.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“During the years Lucy Letby is alleged to have committed her crimes—specifically 2015 to 2016—the neonatal unit was still functioning under dangerous pressure. Notably, one nurse working on the unit during this period recalled: “2015 and 2016 were horrendously busy... They were probably the worst years I can remember in more than twenty years... Everybody was absolutely stretched to the limit... You were expected to look after the maximum number that you could—sometimes over the number that you should.” The inquiry ought to ask, if concerns had been raised for over a decade, to what extent did those unresolved staffing failures contribute to the tragedies that followed? Were those failures addressed before responsibility was placed on Letby?”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“One of the nurses let go later described it as “the decimation of the Nursing and Midwifery service”, adding that “eight registered nurses...were replaced with nursery nurses...unqualified staff are replacing qualified staff”. She described a trust blighted by “inefficient managers...managers to manage managers, people to tick boxes...inefficient computer programmes”, all “at the expense of the registered nurse/midwife”. If management’s response was to bury the problem, what does that tell us about the state of the Countess of Chester by 2015? A system repeatedly warned to be unsafe cannot merely be treated as the backdrop to the events of 2015 to 2016—it is at least part of the explanation. By 2012 the hospital was recruiting newly qualified nurses, often straight from university. One of them was Lucy Letby.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As far back as 2004, senior neonatal staff at the Countess of Chester were warning management of a “staffing crisis which...shows no signs of abating”, highlighting that the unit was operating 30% to 40% below the staffing levels recommended by the British Association of Perinatal Medicine. They described stress that “exceeded tolerable levels”, reinforcing that such conditions “could increase the risk of unintentional professional negligence”. But how did management respond? To cut costs they abolished the advanced neonatal nurse practitioners, the most highly trained specialists in their field, upon whom the entire safe working of the unit depended.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Baroness Amos concluded: “the maternity and neonatal system is not set up to deliver consistently safe, high-quality and compassionate care... It is fragmented, overly complex and too slow to…improve.” She highlighted “unsafe and unacceptable” hospital buildings, “excessive workload pressures” and staff who felt “ignored… when they raised concerns about whether they could provide a safe or joined-up service”. She also highlighted “dangerous clinical environments”, senior leaders who “were not accountable” and, of course, staff who were “fearful of being blamed when things went wrong”. If the Thirlwall inquiry was unwilling to heed the growing concerns of experts, it cannot dismiss the conclusions of two Government reviews.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The second is poor clinical management: the unit was repeatedly tasked with caring for babies requiring the highest level of specialist capacity—capacity it did not have. The third is environmental risks: there were serious contamination problems within the hospital. Two damning reviews of NHS maternity services more generally have now been published. The Ockenden report exposed failures at Nottingham University hospitals NHS trust that mirror those at the Countess of Chester: infections, overcrowding, under-resourcing, sustained pressure and overstretched staff—different hospitals, but strikingly similar failures. Baroness Amos has also published her final report on NHS maternity and neonatal services. Its conclusions echo with remarkable consistency the concerns raised about the Countess of Chester.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Post Office Horizon scandal highlighted the institutional instinct to find a convenient scapegoat. Innocent people paid the price, while the institution sought to protect itself. If the Thirlwall inquiry asks too narrow a set of questions, systemic NHS failures will go unexamined. More innocent children will die, more innocent parents will be put through agony, and another hospital will find another scapegoat—that is the consequence of getting this wrong. So what should the inquiry’s terms of reference include? There are at least three lines of inquiry that deserve examination. Each is supported by substantial evidence. Each almost certainly contributed to what happened. Each risks being overlooked. The first is the staffing crises: this was a neonatal unit stretched beyond its limits and operating under relentless pressure.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Since her trial and conviction, a growing body of distinguished scientific opinion has challenged the supposed evidence on which they rest. Prominent experts—heads of royal societies and royal colleges, and leading voices in medicine, statistics and forensics—have raised concerns about Miss Letby’s convictions. They have come forward in extraordinary numbers, calling for the inquiry’s scope to be revised. If the case against Miss Letby is straightforward, why have so many people with nothing to gain, but their reputations to lose, publicly challenged it? At the outset of the inquiry, I warned the chair that by failing to broaden its terms of reference to examine credible alternative hypotheses, we risk protecting a conclusion rather than conducting a forensic search for the truth.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This is my third debate on the general issue of Lucy Letby, and I remind the House of what I have said before: justice must never be sacrificed for institutional self-preservation. We are awaiting the publication of the Thirlwall inquiry’s findings into the deaths at the Countess of Chester. When the inquiry was established, it was tasked with examining three areas: the experiences at the Countess of Chester and the parents named in the indictment; the conduct of the hospital’s staff with regard to Lucy Letby; and the effectiveness of NHS management and culture in safeguarding babies, and recommendations for reform if relevant. Every question stems from the assumption that Lucy Letby is guilty beyond doubt.”
House of Commons16 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I press the Minister on his lack of answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes). When it became apparent that Mandelson posed an obvious and serious security risk to the state, it was said that ongoing mitigations were put in place to control that risk. Will the ISC see those ongoing mitigations? And if not, why not?”
House of Commons19 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I give notice that if, after we have received the next tranche of documents, the Humble Address has not been met in full, or if we have not been told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I will seek to table such a motion.”
House of Commons19 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On a point of order, given that this applies directly to the Minster, I draw the House’s attention to the motion tabled by the now Prime Minister on 4 December 2018 following non-compliance with a previous Humble Address. It starts: “That this House finds Ministers in contempt for their failure to comply with the requirements of the motion for return passed on 13 November 2018”. —[ Official Report , 4 December 2018; Vol. 650, c. 668.] That motion was passed by this House. We have just debated an area where the Government may potentially be in contempt of the House; indeed, the obfuscation we have heard looks like that. It is important that the House and the Government know that there is precedent in this area.”
House of Commons19 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Prime Minister quite rightly prioritises the defence of the country. We have depended for decades on the courage, honour and loyalty of our soldiers. However, some of our best units are now losing soldiers, because this Government are undermining them and allowing them, under the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, to be prosecuted and persecuted for alleged crimes—that were not carried out—from decades ago.”
House of Commons13 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I recommend that the House reads the Labour Growth Group report called, “An Honest Day”, which is aimed directly at this problem. While I do not agree with everything in it, there are a lot of good ideas that the Government should have already taken on. When Labour took over, inflation was bang on 2%—that is something it cannot claim was disguised in any way—and now it is 3.3%. Again, Labour and the Prime Minister will try to blame somebody else, and no doubt at the moment the blame is on the strait of Hormuz. That explains energy costs in the future; it does not explain the increases in food costs in the past, or indeed a number of other costs.”
House of Commons13 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) was exactly right when she said that Labour must be “judged on actions and not just our words”. As a number of people have said, including the new leader of the SNP group, the hon. Member for Angus and Perthshire Glens (Dave Doogan), Labour came into office promising that its No. 1 mission was economic growth. It was right to do so, because without growth we do not have the money to do anything else, yet the consequences of its own policies in the last couple of years have been that growth has been suppressed. The IMF has literally just reduced the UK’s growth forecast by half a percentage point. That is the largest reduction in the G7. It is not just the Opposition who are concerned about growth.”
House of Commons13 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“During the privileges debate, I told the House that I had hoped, a couple of years ago, that the Prime Minister would make a success of his new job. Unfortunately, this House is now debating against the backdrop of a Labour psychodrama, but that psychodrama would not have happened except for the fact that the Government have failed, and failed very clearly. In his now infamous speech, the Prime Minister said that he was going to undertake a reset. I don’t know about the Labour party, but the country certainly needs a reset. What he said, in describing his reset, was that he needed to “explain” things better. That is not a reset; that is a re-spin of what they are doing. We need a proper reset. The hon.”
House of Commons13 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“No, not for the moment. Neither does it explain the increase in borrowing costs, which are higher than any other G7 country’s and virtually double Japan’s. That is nobody’s fault but the Chancellor’s, and the horrific consequences for our public finances have been laid out already by the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown). The real brake is Labour’s own policies: high taxes, massively burdensome regulation, high business rates and high energy costs. What on earth do we expect from our businesses when we saddle the country with the most expensive energy in the developed world, or indeed with the national insurance increases that the hon. Member for Angus and Perthshire Glens mentioned?”
House of Commons13 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am afraid that, because of the size of the debt, we have no choice but to cut welfare costs. I am a great believer in our welfare system, but it should be a safety net, not a lifestyle choice. People who can work should work, and the public have little sympathy for those who choose benefits over a job. It is true today, and it has been true since I was a child on a council estate, that the British working class, who Labour used to think of as its own voters, hate it when they see one of their neighbours choosing to sit at home spending the taxes that they have earned. Low growth handicaps our ability to solve our citizens’ problems.”
House of Commons13 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is interesting, because the hon. Member’s Government and his Secretary of State have claimed, “All these green policies are reducing the cost of our energy. Not using oil and gas is reducing the cost of energy.” What is the consequence? The highest energy costs in the world. I will be interested to hear if he can explain that when he makes his speech. The other issue is that growth, or the loss of growth, has a material impact on the public finances. To give the House a measure of that, a 1% change in the growth rate is £10 billion to £11 billion in the first year and then more money in the consequential years, so when we lose that growth, we lose that amount of money. But even if we imagine that we could get that growth back, it still would not be enough. It would not be enough to pay the bills that we need to pay. So what can we do?”
House of Commons13 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I think the answer to the question is, “No, it didn’t,” but the hon. Member should be aware that it was only two months ago that a Labour Member described me as the MP who is never knowingly on message, which is a label I espouse—I do not mind that. No Government have got this right. We need a welfare system that looks after the disabled and people who have no choice about what they are suffering, but not one that makes it an even choice to be on the dole or in a job.”
House of Commons13 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It went from 129 deaths per 100,000 people to 156 in the course of a decade. That is a huge increase and, as a result, we have an avoidable death rate that is higher than all our comparator nations. I am not just talking about rich nations like Japan; we are even worse off than countries like Portugal that are much poorer than we are. It is an extraordinary problem that we have to face.”
House of Commons13 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will pick three issues—I could pick any number, but the top three issues that matter to my constituents are healthcare, education and defence. Our health service needs radical reform. I know we have a Bill in this King’s Speech, but it does not look to me like it will have a sufficiently radical impact. For some reason, we do not actually speak enough about the fundamental aims of our health service. Healthcare must be free at the point of delivery—that is an absolute—but it also must do its job of saving lives, and we turn our face away from that too often. Too many Britons are dying early and avoidably under a system that swallows money without delivering the outcomes. Every year, 125,000 deaths are listed officially as avoidable, and the situation has worsened in recent years.”
House of Commons13 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will be careful how I answer the right hon. Member because I have an interest to declare here: I have a disabled grandchild, and her mother is one of the people who suffers the stress he talked about. As I say, we need a humane system that deals with people properly. Our current system for supporting disabled people and people looking after disabled people is incredibly bureaucratic, unpleasant and nasty to deal with. That is not the area of welfare that we need to deal with; it is principally the area of employment that we need to deal with. We want to get people back to work, because there is no better way out of poverty than employment, rather than, as it were, being on the dole. To come back to the thrust of my argument, what is it that we are talking about paying for?”
House of Commons13 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The regiment of which the rest of the world is envious is being undermined by the Government’s strategy, and they should walk away from that policy and drop it. We should bin that Bill. I do not want to take any more of the House’s time. I have picked three subjects, but there are many other important issues that the Government need to address. I say again that I hope the Prime Minister succeeds in resetting the Government and giving them new dynamism. At the moment, however, the only attractive part of the King’s Speech for me was the last line, which always says the same thing: “Other measures will be laid before you.””
House of Commons13 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Honourable people who fought bravely for their country and did nothing wrong are being punished in their old age. That is a disgrace. The excuse that the Government used when they started the Bill was that the previous legislation was illegal—that is what a lower court found. Last week, however, the Supreme Court overturned that judgment in the Dillon case. There is now no legal basis for the Government’s policy, yet still we are pressing on. I asked the Prime Minister, and he said that they are still pressing on with it, effectively psychologically torturing people who served this country. That is morally wrong, but moreover it is causing people to leave the SAS in numbers—this is now in the public domain and I can say it. Our best and most active regiment is being depleted and destroyed.”
House of Commons13 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If hon. Members need to, they should look at the Dragon, the Type 45 ships, or the Ajax. If the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee were sitting here now, he could get up and given me a dozen cases of disgraceful scandals in procurement in our Ministry of Defence, and we need to put that right. If we are to maintain effective armed forces, we must also maintain the morale and spirit of our soldiers. The simple truth is that the first step towards that is to treat those soldiers decently, and we are not doing that. The Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, which has been carried over into this Session, is exposing soldiers who fought in Northern Ireland to being dragged through the courts, sometimes three times over the course of five years, as with Soldier B in the Coagh case. They are in their 60s, 70s and 80s.”
House of Commons13 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“At the moment, our military is depleted beyond value and would struggle in a major war, and obviously we must address that. In addition, we must ensure that our strategy and management are right. Frankly, the management of the Ministry of Defence is a disgrace—to be honest, I cannot pick a better word. I always think that it is symbolic of the extraordinary priorities of the MOD that we have 134 admirals to oversee 63 ships, many of which are not able to set sail at any point in time—Nelson must be spinning in his grave. That is symbolic, but similarly the UK currently maintains an Army of just over 70,000 people, and the Ministry of Defence employs roughly 60,000 civil servants—a ratio that defies logic. Of those civil servants, just under a quarter are employed in procurement, operating a system that is among the worst in the world.”
House of Commons13 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We could have grants for science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine, architecture and design—courses that will contribute to the economic growth of this country—and take the rest from there. We need radical reform, but we will not see it in this year’s education Bill. Finally, I want to talk briefly about defence. There has been much criticism of the Government, rightly, for taking too long over enlarging the expenditure we put into defence, and the simple truth is that we will face challenges that will materialise much faster than we expect. The hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) spoke in an earlier question about peace being better than war, and since Roman times we have known that being well armed is the best way to prevent war. Nobody wants warfare.”
House of Commons13 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It takes away much of the point of university, because at least one in five courses do not give youngsters opportunities that will pay for their education. That means that we have to write off their loans, and in the next 50 years, the Government—the state—will pay £430 billion in unpaid loans in cash terms. From what I have seen of the calculations, I am pretty sure that that is an underestimate. In my view, we should revise the whole policy radically, and perhaps look again at grants for certain courses—I think the Liberals have talked about this—with a 2% graduate tax to offset it, or something like that. That is better than what we have now, which leaves a loan hanging over people for their entire adult life—a loan they may never pay back.”
House of Commons13 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We must do something about it, and we can. Uniquely, using AI and software, we can do quite a lot to help children at the bottom of the scale, but we do not currently do that, and the Department for Education is not up to it. It is not under this Government and it was not under the preceding one—I spoke about this at the time, and we need to put it right. It is not just the very young who we are letting down; a whole generation in higher education is being failed. The transition to student loans and tuition fees by the Blair Government has been an unmitigated disaster, shackling a whole generation to mortgages without houses and futures without jobs. I opposed it when it came in, I opposed my party’s decision to uphold it when we came into government, and I oppose it today.”
House of Commons13 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“A number of speakers have already said that there is an intergenerational problem in our society today, and education is where that crystalises. We are failing both very young children and young adults. Evidence shows that one in four children are not sufficiently literate or mathematically capable by the age of 11 to get any benefit from the next stage of education. To put it another way, the state has failed a quarter of our children by the time they get to 11. For poor children—those on free school meals and so on—we can double that number; in fact, we can more than double it. When I grew up, I was lucky to be at the peak of social mobility in this country. This was one of the world’s leading meritocracies, but that is no longer the case. That is a shame on our nation and we must put it right, starting at the bottom.”
House of Commons13 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That means we can do something like 17 hernia repairs rather than five, or 12 hip replacements instead of four—those are the numbers they measured. A lot of lives are saved rather than lost, because people are put through the system and are not effectively left waiting until they die, as has happened to a number of my constituents. We need to reflect that efficiency in the management of the health service. It requires a complete change in how we select, train and organise the senior management of the national health service. For the moment, they are not up to the job and we need to put that right, but I do not see anything in the King’s Speech that will do that. My second point is about education.”
House of Commons13 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is absolutely right. My concern is that the reason we have so many excess deaths is not poor doctors or poor nurses, but poor management. We have really, really poor national health service management. To put it starkly, poor management effectively kills 15,000 people a year. If we improved that number, we could get within range of our comparator nations. That is a huge number of people, and we could do quite a lot about it if we set our mind to it. Experiments within the health service now demonstrate that. Just over the river at St Thomas’, a high intensity theatre programme triples the number of people who can be put through an operating theatre or under the hands of one surgeon in a day.”
House of Commons13 May 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Interestingly, the hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) thought otherwise.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The head of the diplomatic service, as we heard this morning in the Foreign Affairs Committee, was not even consulted. Why? Because within the London establishment, a ludicrous self-deception had taken hold—that the peculiarities of the Trump Administration could be countered by the peculiarities of Peter Mandelson.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That mindset, which I am afraid constitutes a sanctimonious arrogance sustained by a habit of believing their own propaganda, is precisely what led to the appointment of a deeply unsuitable individual as our ambassador to Washington: a man twice dismissed after scandal; a man now under formal investigation by the European Union’s anti-fraud office; a man who had an extraordinary relationship with a convicted paedophile; a man driven, above all, by a pursuit of glamour, money and status; a man who turned amorality into an art form—and, in addition to that, a man plainly compromised by over-close relationships with the proxies of both the Russian and the Chinese Governments. Together, those facts should have made this appointment unthinkable, yet the concerns were brushed aside.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The responsibility for absolute honesty rests most heavily on the Prime Minister, so the standard that should be met by the Prime Minister is even higher than that applying to others. Recklessness with the truth from any Minister is unacceptable; from the Prime Minister, it is indefensible. All political parties have their inherent flaws—and I am not going to spend a whole day talking about mine—but the origins of this situation lie in a stance often taken by Labour MPs, which is that good intentions somehow justify bad decisions. It is a case of saying, “We mean well, so our mistakes do not matter” or, worse, “We mean well, so we should be forgiven for anything”, whether it is freebies or wrong appointments or whatever.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“At the risk of expulsion from my own party, I will admit to having hoped after the election that this Prime Minister would succeed, because it was in the interests of the country that he did so, but in some ways even more importantly, it was in the interests of our democracy. There is already extant throughout the western world a corrosion of belief in democracy; that goes on and on, and this will make it worse. We are here today for a simple reason. Statements made by the Prime Minister in this Chamber are at odds with those provided by the civil service on the material issue of Peter Mandelson. This matters. It is not a stunt. Honesty between Ministers and Parliament is fundamental to our democracy. Without it, scrutiny fails. Without it, accountability fails. Without it, trust fails.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Sometimes the wisdom of the House is crystallised in the comments of us ordinary Back Benchers. That was particularly evident today in the brave speech of the hon. Member for South Shields (Emma Lewell) and, indeed, the intervention of the hon. Member for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan) on the Leader of the Opposition. Both Members said, in effect, that what we have lived through in the last several months is a tragedy—not just for the House, not just for the Government, not just for the Labour party, but for the trust in government, and in our democracy among ordinary people.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“One Member—I cannot remember his name, or see him in the Chamber—tried to suggest earlier that pressure on time was different from pressure on outcome, but when vetting is involved, it is not. My first positive vetting took six months. Now, I know I have unreliable friends, but I have fewer, I think, than Lord Mandelson. It would have taken quite a long time to get to the bottom of all the issues relating to Lord Mandelson. Saying “You’ve got to do it quickly” is the same as saying “You’ve got to do it shoddily.” Let us not lose sight of that.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is entirely true, and in fact, the current Trump Administration made the same point to the Government before the nomination of Peter Mandelson. That perverse logic led to the most obviously unwise public appointment in modern times, and the implied message, unfortunately, was clear: “Government appointments rest on networks of patronage; great offices of state are perks to be handed out to friends.” It is systemic. They even tried to secure an ambassadorial appointment for Lord Doyle, a man so unsuitable that he has even had the Whip withdrawn. Mandelson’s unsuitability was evident before vetting began. It would have been surprising had the vetting service not found grounds to reject the appointment. I suspect that No. 10 knew that, and leant on the Foreign Office to ensure that the outcome was secured quickly and without question.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Much has been made of Boris Johnson’s appearance before the Committee of Privileges, and I am famously a fan of Boris Johnson. When a similar motion was brought to this House on whether the matter should go to that Committee, it was clearly recognised at the time that we were not delivering a verdict, but deciding whether there was a case to be answered. At the time, I made it very plain to our Whips Office that I would not countenance any attempt to block a proper investigation into a House of Commons matter. I was by no means alone; a number of other colleagues made the same argument. As a result, the Government of the day accepted that it was a House of Commons matter. It is improper for the Government to intervene in such a matter to try to guide the House. Accordingly, the motion passed without a Whip, and without a Division.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Rather than addressing concerns directly, the Prime Minister proceeded regardless, and only later sought to justify his decision with answers that were, I am afraid, frequently misleading. As a former Director of Public Prosecutions, he should have known better. What began as a mistake evolved into something more serious. A failure turned into a defence, a problem became a pattern and, ultimately, the situation now looks like a cover-up. But as we have already heard from my Front Benchers and a number of other speakers, today is not about determining guilt; it is about determining whether there is a case to answer. Finding the truth and adjudicating guilt is the task of the Committee of Privileges, which has both the time and the access required to examine the evidence in full.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The civil service was placed under extreme pressure to deliver outcomes that sat on the margins of propriety. When concerns were raised, they were not confronted but sidestepped. As usual in No. 10, an attempt was made to place the blame on somebody else. Even in this week’s New Statesman , which is traditionally a banner carrier for the Prime Minister, there is a quote—I think it is in Tom McTague’s article—from a senior Government official who goes on at length against the Prime Minister and ends by saying: “Ask Chris. Ask Sue. Ask Morgan. Ask Olly. He will say he takes responsibility, but then he makes everyone else pay.” That is what we are looking at.”
House of Commons28 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗