We need to talk about Anna
Predictable silence from the media on the subject of Anna Soubry, the Department of Health, the European Scrutiny Committee and the Tobacco Products Directive.
One journalist responded by emailing me to say, "The Lords committee was scrutinising the TPD in April when Soubry was before them."
So?
A Commons committee made up of elected representatives is surely more important than a similar committee of unelected peers.
For a minister to deny MPs the opportunity to do their job – in this case scrutinise an important EU Directive – is extraordinary, yet not a single journalist has made an issue of it or reported the fact that Soubry got a serious ticking off (see previous post).
Meanwhile the Lynton Crosby story rumbles on – I've just been listening to Radio 4's The World at One question Boris Johnson about it – with not a shred of evidence that Crosby ever lobbied the PM on plain packaging.
And to think the silly season has not even started.
Josef K has summarised the situation rather well, I think:
Anna Soubry has been before the scrutiny committee and scrutinised here. She failed to follow procedure, got a ticking off, and has apologised profusely. During her time before the committee, she showed a lack of familiarity with her brief – for example she said that e-cigs had ‘fallen out of the TPD’ which is certainly not the case.
However, by not following the dictates and procedure of the scrutiny process she has effectively denied MPs and their constituents the ability to debate the content of the TPD in parliament. This leaves us in the position of a rush to judgement over the TPD, before the end of the Irish presidency, without proper debate in the UK. This has resulted in a swathe of horse-trading between health ministers from member states, including those from Sweden who have accepted TPD endorsement in order to retain suns flavourings in Sweden (for example).
Read the full post here: Scrutinising Anna Soubry. It's not long and it's worth a moment of your time.
This afternoon I was contacted by a Sunday newspaper.
Did they want to talk about Anna Soubry?
Er, no ... Lynton Crosby.