PMQs review: The Afghan data scandal hits Westminster
If Westminster watchers were hoping to end the parliamentary session with a bang, PMQs was once again a massive anti-climax. Coming 24 hours after the jaw-dropping reports of the Afghan data breach and two-year super-injunction broke, it was always going to be one of those sparring matches marked by the disconnect between the news of the day and what the leader of the opposition chose to ask about. Kemi Badenoch, after all, was unlikely to hammer Keir Starmer with questions about a scandal which took place while she herself was in government.
Still, it is rarely a good sign when the headline revelation comes after the session itself. In the post-PMQs huddle, a No 10 spokesperson disclosed that while Badenoch only learned of the data breach on Monday, she had in fact been offered a security briefing in which she would have been informed of it back in March. Later, the Tory leader's own spokesperson confirmed that she had declined the invitation of the briefing, on the grounds that it was not marked as urgent. Awkward stuff when someone whose strategy every week at PMQs is to accuse her adversary of not being across the detail cannot be bothered to turn up and find things out for herself.
In a way, this unedifying update sums up how the weekly Badenoch-Starmer spectacles have felt this year. Badenoch frequently trips herself up by not being on top of the detail – choosing questions plucked from the tabloid front pages without checking their accuracy, attacking decisions made by the government she was part of, and appearing to have only recently discovered things that should have fallen well within her brief as a minister. If the job of opposition leader is meant to be an audition for that of prime minister, she is not doing herself any favours.
As for what actually happened in the chamber, if you missed this particularly episode it isn't worth watching back. It wasn't only Badenoch who didn't want to talk about the implications of a government secretly developing a whole new policy and getting a court order to prevent anyone – including our elected representatives in parliament – from knowing about it. MPs seemed to have had a mass memory lapse, skirting the issue in favour of the usual PMQs fodder: social housing, water shortages, digital ID cards. All important issues, to be sure, but in a week in which the very concept of democratic accountability has been challenged, you might have expected them to have something to say about it. Ed Davey did note that the Lib Dems would support Starmer if he wanted to pursue a public inquiry into the saga, but that was about it.
Badenoch led on the economy (because of course she did), building up through her questions to the prime minister on inflation, tax rises and the cost of borrowing to a painfully scripted call to 'go through his end of term score card'. She couldn't quite get the call-and-response trick with her own MPs to work this time, which was a bit embarrassing. There was a telling moment when she pressed Starmer on what his team mean when they talk about people on 'modest incomes' (a phrase used by Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander earlier in the week), which he dodged with a definition of 'working people'. Expect much more speculation on who is and isn't included in this bracket as we get into Budget season after the summer and Rachel Reeves has to figure out how to raise revenue without breaking the promise not to raise taxes on this particular group. But other than that, it was all the usual attack lines. At this point, ChatGPT could probably write them for her.
Starmer's answers were similarly an amalgamation of everything we have heard from him in these sessions over the last year: £22bn black hole, fastest growth in the G7, calls for the Tories to apologies. If you had 'Liz Truss mini-budget' on your bingo card, you were in luck once again.
The other safe bet these days is that Starmer will find a way to shoehorn an attack on Reform somewhere into his answers. Today was no exception. Labour MP for Rossendale and Darwen Andy MacNae (who has been out and about on the New Statesman website this week calling for less reliance on OBR forecasts) asked about concerns over cuts to nursery funding in his patch in Lancashire, where Reform is in charge of the council. This gave Starmer the opportunity to remind the House that's MacNae's predecessor in the seat, former Conservative chairman Jake Berry, has recently ditched his party for Reform. The defection, the PM argued, 'proves once again if you vote Tory you get Reform, and if you vote Reform you get the Tories'. We're only a year into this parliament, and already that line is getting worn out.
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But perhaps Starmer had something other than originality on his mind today. Just hours after the session ended the news broke that the prime minister has suspended at least four of his MPs. Those MPs are reported to be Rachael Maskell, Brian Leishman, Neil Duncan-Jordan and Chris Hinchcliff. Their offence? 'Persistent breaches of party discipline', although there are also rumours they have been 'actively organising against the government'. This time last year when Starmer withdrew the whip from a group of MPs for being disobedient, one of them was Zarah Sultana – who is now off to found (maybe) her own left-wing party. A lesson there, as MPs drift a way from a thoroughly pointless PMQs session into the supposed calm of the summer recess.
[Further reading: Are Unite and Labour heading for divorce?]
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