Health minister in hot water
Wednesday, April 24, 2013 at 16:51 Ian Paisley Jr, member of parliament for North Antrim, is not happy, reports Guido Fawkes:
He’s on the attack after Anna Soubry was revealed in yesterday’s Times to have lunched Patrick Wintour just before a story by him appeared in the Guardian suggesting plain packaging of fag packets would be introduced.
See: Price of Soubry's spin.
It follows yesterday's post, Did health minister leak Queen's Speech story to Guardian?.
Speaking in a House of Commons debate on Northern Ireland yesterday afternoon, a furious Paisley said:
According to the response to a freedom of information request, which is in the House of Commons Library, the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) was interviewed by Patrick Wintour of The Guardian on or about 28 February. Five days later, on 5 March, an article appeared in that newspaper indicating that the proposal was going to be in the Queen’s Speech. That drove 2.8% off the stock market value of the shares of a manufacturing company in the United Kingdom. The share price has not yet recovered, despite Ministers’ denials that they are going to introduce such a policy on 8 May.
You can find his full speech in Hansard here.
To see the FOI response that got Paisley's goat click here. I think we'll hear a lot more about this.
See also: The Anna Soubry ministerial level car crash continues (Dick Puddlecote).
Reader Comments (6)
Bye, Bye
Anybody brave enough to think Soubry will keep her job?
So, um... will the DH ever release the so-called "public consultation" to the public? Here we are eight months after the consultation closed. Why are the DH hiding this from public view? That was a rhetorical question, obviously.) I cannot find any consultation that took this long for the results to be published -- not one! -- and there were many that were far more complex than the plain packaging proposal. We need to demand an answer from our unelected civil servants as to why they are outrageously subverting the standard consultation process.
Tch tch!
Stock market manipulation?
Never ever would "fonctionnaire's" of government do a thing like that surely?
Sarc/ off.
Has Global warming induced a New Ice Age in Hades, are the Damned wandering around Tatarus in Berghaus fleeces and woolly hats and is "Gehenna Worms" Birds Eye's answer to Turkey Twizzlers?
Seriously, Hell must have indeed frozen over cos I can't explain my agreeing with The Son Of Dr NO any other way.
Strange times we live in, strange times indeed.
Either there is a lot of disagreement in the DoH and the Cabinet about standardised packaging or the Zealots are terrified of publishing the report.
I have a feeling that what the Zealots in the DoH want to do is to release the report at the same time that an intention to legislate is announced (via the Queen's speech). In that way, discussion of the report will be irrelevant, since the Government will have already made the decision to legislate.
It looks as if another cute parliamentary trick is in the offing.
Yes, Junican, but this time it will be noticed by many thousands of people. If they do as you say, they nail their colours to the mast as corrupt.