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).