TIKTOK should not be the first place to hear about new Government policy, the Chancellor was warned as she made a statement on cost-of-living support.
Rachel Reeves received a dressing down from deputy speaker Judith Cummins on Thursday as she prepared to set out measures to mitigate the economic impact of the Iran war.
Several of those measures had already been briefed to the media, including cuts to tariffs on some food products and free bus travel for children in August.
But the Ministerial Code, which governs how ministers should behave, states that policy announcements should be made first in Parliament.
Cummins said: “I have to say to the Chancellor that Mr Speaker has checked the Ministerial Code and it makes clear that important policy announcements should be made in the first instance in this House when it is sitting.
“This House and its members should be the first to know what the Government is doing, not TikTok.
“Posting videos on social media announcing new policies before informing this House is not in line with the Government’s own rules. This is a new parliamentary session and ministers must do better.”
Earlier in the day, Speaker Lindsay Hoyle had given a similar rebuke to Treasury minister Lucy Rigby, complaining about policies being “drip-fed to the media”.
Hoyle said: “These backbenchers of either side are elected to this House to hear it first. Not to be outside a Morrisons petrol station, not to be on a bus, not doing it on TikTok.”
Rigby said she would ensure Hoyle comments were “fed back to the entirety of the ministerial team”.
But Reeves did not acknowledge either Hoyle comments or Cummins’s during her own statement to MPs.
The dressing down is the latest in a series of complaints by the Speaker about major announcements being made outside Parliament.
Cummins herself reprimanded the Government for making announcements on immigration policy outside the Commons in March this year, while Hoyle similarly complained about announcements on leasehold reform in January.
Records provided by the House of Commons library show the Speaker and his deputies have made formal statements complaining about announcements outside Parliament 10 times since Labour came to power in 2024, not including those made on Thursday.
During the last parliament, Hoyle made only seven such statements.
In January this year, a report from the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee said the Government should either comply with the Ministerial Code’s requirements on making announcements in Parliament, or re-write the rules.
