Sir Jeremy Heywood is currently insisting to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs select committee that there is absolutely nothing untoward about his guidance to civil servants about withholding documents that have a bearing on the EU referendum from ministers. ‘I’m really struggling to see what the problem is here,’ he has just argued to MPs. The row is occupying the energy of an awful lot of Tory MPs at the moment, and is unlikely to go away.
One way that ministers could escalate the dispute is to work with backbenchers and use departmental questions in the Commons to make their point about the impact that this guidance has on their ability to do their jobs from day to day. Pro-Brexit MPs are considering the sort of co-ordinated operation that a minister’s PPS normally organises for each question session in the Chamber, which involves suggestions about the sorts of questions that ministers would appreciate a backbencher asking them.
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