Lisa Smart

Liberal Democrat — Hazel Grove

Speaking in the House of Commons on 24 February 2026

Debate

Contribution

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. We have seen some press reports about civil servants who were doing their job and absolutely rightly questioning some of the expenses that were being put through, but they were overruled. That clearly is not good enough and not acceptable, and it is not what we should expect from our institutions and establishment. I completely agree about the importance of being clear about what we expect when somebody takes on a public role at cost to the taxpayer. We should have very high standards. We should, as the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) said, talk about how we can ensure that those with power are held to account. She was entirely right in the points she made about what we do with this information, where we go with it and how we build from here. My hon. Friend the Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) made a really strong speech in which he gave very constructive suggestions to the Minister of measures that we Liberal Democrats would support in bringing about change to the system.

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