Thursday, April 09, 2020
Accountability needed
With Parliament effectively shut down until after the lockdown the problem of how to scrutinise and hold ministers to account rears its head once more. This is not about scoring points, but effective scrutiny can actually add value to what the government is doing.
One Minister who is proving particularly elusive is the Home Secretary, somebody who one would have thought would be playing a crucial role in the Government's response to COVID-19 and have a much higher profile that she does so far.
Correspondence the Guardian has seen reveals that Priti Patel, has been accused by an influential group of MPs of avoiding scrutiny at a time of national emergency:
Yvette Cooper, the chair of the home affairs select committee, has written to Patel six times – most recently in a letter issued on Wednesday – in an attempt to fix a date for the home secretary to give evidence in public to the committee, but a date for a hearing has not been confirmed.
After repeatedly ignoring correspondence from Cooper, Patel replied to the committee chair on Tuesday telling her she was “disappointed at the increasingly adversarial tone of our exchanges” and declining an invitation to give evidence remotely on 15 April. She reluctantly agreed to appear before the MPs at the end of the month, but did not set a date.
Cooper, in her latest missive, points out that the justice secretary, work and pensions secretary, transport secretary and health secretary have given evidence to their select committees already or have agreed a date to do so.
The paper says that the committee has been pressing Patel to provide evidence since the end of January, during which time the secretary of state has been accused of belittling officials and presiding over an “atmosphere of fear” at the Home Office. Sir Philip Rutnam resigned as permanent secretary at the Home Office, claiming constructive dismissal and accusing Patel of bullying her subordinates.
With the understandable impact of the lockdown on civil liberties, surely, it is important to get some answers on what exactly the Home Secretary has been doing during this crisis and why she has been so invisible for most of it.
One Minister who is proving particularly elusive is the Home Secretary, somebody who one would have thought would be playing a crucial role in the Government's response to COVID-19 and have a much higher profile that she does so far.
Correspondence the Guardian has seen reveals that Priti Patel, has been accused by an influential group of MPs of avoiding scrutiny at a time of national emergency:
Yvette Cooper, the chair of the home affairs select committee, has written to Patel six times – most recently in a letter issued on Wednesday – in an attempt to fix a date for the home secretary to give evidence in public to the committee, but a date for a hearing has not been confirmed.
After repeatedly ignoring correspondence from Cooper, Patel replied to the committee chair on Tuesday telling her she was “disappointed at the increasingly adversarial tone of our exchanges” and declining an invitation to give evidence remotely on 15 April. She reluctantly agreed to appear before the MPs at the end of the month, but did not set a date.
Cooper, in her latest missive, points out that the justice secretary, work and pensions secretary, transport secretary and health secretary have given evidence to their select committees already or have agreed a date to do so.
The paper says that the committee has been pressing Patel to provide evidence since the end of January, during which time the secretary of state has been accused of belittling officials and presiding over an “atmosphere of fear” at the Home Office. Sir Philip Rutnam resigned as permanent secretary at the Home Office, claiming constructive dismissal and accusing Patel of bullying her subordinates.
With the understandable impact of the lockdown on civil liberties, surely, it is important to get some answers on what exactly the Home Secretary has been doing during this crisis and why she has been so invisible for most of it.
