Lucy Powell

I thank the hon. Lady for raising this urgent question, and I welcome the opportunity to emphasise that I take these matters very seriously. We have made a number of very big announcements to the House, often responding to world events in real time. I recognise—and I hope she will respect this—that there are judgments to be made and, at times, a balance to be struck, and I have the best interests of the House in mind. Although the hon. Lady did not say so, there have been many times in this parliamentary Session when statements have been made to this House long before the media or anybody else were aware of them—for example, on prison capacity, increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, the response to the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s report into the women’s state pension age, and many others. On many of those occasions, the criticism that I received was that Members did not have enough time to properly consider the details of the statements before having the opportunity to question the Minister. Hard copies of the immigration White Paper, which is a lengthy and detailed document, were made available in the Table Office at 9.30 that morning to allow Members ample time to read and consider it before questioning the Home Secretary on the Floor of the House in a session that lasted an hour and 25 minutes. The hon. Lady raised last Thursday’s statement on the US trade deal, and I think we can all recognise that that did not happen exactly as we would have liked. International events are often outside our control, and they do not take account of UK parliamentary sitting hours. The Trade Minister made an oral statement to the House as soon as he was able to do so, and I was trying to get the balance right. We wanted to make a statement when the maximum number of Members were here; otherwise, it would not have been made for several days, because it was a Thursday and the House was rising. We are doing a lot. We are getting on with delivering on a huge number of policies, and we have signed unprecedented trade deals with other countries. The US trade deal, which is delivering lower tariffs for steel and car manufacturing, is absolutely critical, as is the India trade deal, which is delivering for Scottish distilleries and for Scotland. We are always trying to get the balance right, and I want to emphasise my commitment to making sure that when announcements can be made to this House first, they absolutely are.