New Foreign Secretary David Cameron will escape having to face regular grillings by MPs because of his position in the House of Lords.
Lord Cameron will not face the regular sessions of Foreign Office questions, with more junior ministers instead fielding questions in the Commons chamber.
Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy criticised the situation, which will also mean that major statements are either made first in the Upper Chamber by Lord Cameron or by a less senior minister in the Commons.
Mr Lammy said that during an “international crisis”, Rishi Sunak “has chosen an unelected failure from the past who MPs cannot even hold to account”.
Lord Cameron will face questions from elected MPs only when he appears before select committees.
The Institute for Government’s senior researcher Dr Alice Lilly said it was “highly unusual” for secretaries of state to serve in the Lords – the last was Baroness Morgan as culture secretary as an interim measure in 2019-20 – and it is more than 40 years since a foreign secretary was in the upper chamber.
During Gordon Brown’s administration, Lord Mandelson served as business secretary and Lord Adonis as transport secretary.
“After Adonis and Mandelson, the Lords put in place procedures to ensure that Secretaries of State in the Lords would have to answer questions in the Lords in the same way that they would do in the Commons, so I expect that will happen again,” Dr Lilly said.
“And obviously there are plenty of other ministers in the Foreign Office who will be able to answer MPs’ questions, so it’s not like there will be nothing, but it won’t be direct from the Foreign Secretary.”
She added that the culture of the Lords is “very different” from the Commons.
“It tends to be less overtly political; getting the right tone matters. Scrutiny is often of a high quality, because of the range and amount of experience that many members of the Lords have.”
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