House of Commons Procedure Committee Corrections to the Official Report Second Report of Session 2006–07 Report, together with formal minutes and written evidence Ordered by The House of Commons to be printed 23 May 2007 HC 541 Published on 5 June 2007 by authority of the House of Commons London: The Stationery Office Limited £0.00 Procedure Committee The Procedure Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to consider the practice and procedure of the House in the conduct of public business, and to make recommendations. Current membership Rt Hon Greg Knight MP (Conservative, Yorkshire East) (Chairman) Ms Celia Barlow MP (Labour, Hove) Mr Christopher Chope MP (Conservative, Christchurch) Ms Katy Clark MP (Labour, North Ayreshire and Arran) Mr David Gauke MP (Conservative, South West Hertfordshire) Andrew Gwynne MP (Labour, Denton and Reddish) John Hemming MP (Liberal Democrat, Birmingham, Yardley) Mr Eric Illsley MP (Labour, Barnsley Central) Mrs Siân C. James MP (Labour, Swansea East) Rosemary McKenna MP (Labour, Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintolloch East) Mrs Linda Riordan MP (Labour, Halifax) Sir Robert Smith MP (Liberal Democrat, West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) Mr Rob Wilson MP (Conservative, Reading East) Powers The powers of the Committee are set out in House of Commons Standing Orders, principally in SO No 147. These are available on the Internet via www.parliament.uk. Publication The Reports and evidence of the Committee are published by The Stationery Office by Order of the House. All publications of the Committee (including press notices) are on the Internet at http://www.parliament.uk/proccom. A list of Reports of the Committee in the present Parliament is at the back of this Report. Committee staff The current staff of the Committee are Mr Mark Hutton and Mr Keith Neary (Clerks) and Susan Morrison (Committee Assistant). Contacts All correspondence should be addressed to the Clerk of the Procedure Committee, Journal Office, House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA . The telephone number for general enquiries is 020 7219 3318; the Committee’s email address is [email protected]. 1 Contents Report Page Summary 3 Corrections to the Official Report 5 The Problem 5 Our proposal 6 Scope 7 Publication 7 Content 8 Minor corrections 8 Communication with the Member 9 Cross-referencing 9 Implementation 9 Recommendation 9 Formal Minutes 11 List of written evidence 12 Reports from the Procedure Committee since 2005 12 3 Summary Ministers are accountable to Parliament for the Government’s policies and actions. As a consequence they provide the House of Commons with a great deal of information. Under the Ministerial Code and the House’s resolution on Ministerial Accountability to Parliament they have a responsibility to ensure that that information is correct. This responsibility is taken seriously by the Government, but from time to time errors are made. Considering the amount of information provided, these occasions are rare. Currently there are various ways in which Ministers may correct such inadvertently made errors. Some of these are not widely publicised and can be difficult to track down. We believe that this is unsatisfactory. Since the mistakes are recorded in the Official Report (Hansard), the corrections should appear there too. There should also be clearer links between the error and the correction. We therefore recommend that there should be a dedicated section of Hansard in which all corrections should appear. This ‘corrections page’ should be published whenever a correction is made. It should be separately identified in the table of contents and have its own column numbering. We recommend that it should be used for corrections to errors made by Ministers in any proceedings in the Chamber (e.g. including answers to written and oral questions, statements and debates), in Westminster Hall and, in some circumstances, in general committees. It should also be used by other Members who answer on behalf of certain bodies (such as the House of Commons Commission and the Church Commissioners). 5 Corrections to the Official Report The Problem 1. Ministers provide Parliament with a great deal of information. They answer both oral and written parliamentary questions. They make statements on the floor of the House and in writing. They contribute to debates of all sorts. Inevitably there are occasions when some part of that information turns out to have been mistaken. When such mistakes occur, Ministers are under an obligation to correct them. The House’s resolution on Ministerial Accountability states: It is of paramount importance that Ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity.1 The Ministerial Code places a similar requirement on Ministers: it is of paramount importance that Ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity. Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the Prime Minister.2 2. In this short report we are concerned only with the procedures and mechanisms by which Ministers may correct inadvertent errors which they accept they have made. We do not intend to make any change to the procedures by which Ministers are held to account for deliberately misleading the House. We are separately conducting an inquiry into Written Parliamentary Questions in the course of which we will consider the procedures for the answering of questions and what opportunities should be available to Members to pursue answers with which they are not satisfied. 3. We have addressed this matter in part at the instigation of the Leader of the House, Rt Hon Jack Straw MP. He wrote to our Chairman proposing that we should consider the establishment of a separate corrections page in the Official Report (Hansard).3 But that letter was not the start of the process. The matter had been raised with us by Mr Andrew Selous MP in December 2005.4 We had followed it up in correspondence with the then Leader of the House. It was in response to that correspondence that the Leader of the House wrote to us in January this year. We took up his proposal and consulted the relevant House authorities. We received their response in March.5 We are grateful to them for the work they have done in identifying the key issues. This report builds on their memorandum. 4. There are currently five ways in which written corrections can be made. These are described in full in the memorandum from the Editor of Hansard and the Principal Clerk, 1 CJ (1996-97) 328. 2 Ministerial Code 2007, paragraph 1.15. 3 Ev 1 4 Ev 1 5 Ev 2 6 Table Office (referred to throughout the remainder of this report as ‘the Memorandum’). In summary they are— • A letter to the Editor pointing out a minor error which does not alter the meaning of the passage and which is then corrected in the Bound Volume of Hansard. • A pursuant answer. This method (which can only be used to correct an error in the answer to a parliamentary question) requires the agreement of the Table Office and is restricted to ‘relatively inconsequential matters of fact (figures and dates).’6 • An ‘inspired’ question, tabled on behalf of the Minister and which provides an opportunity to correct an answer previously given or a statement previously made. • A letter to the Member to whom the original incorrect information was given explaining that an error was made and giving the correct information. A copy of the letter is also placed in the Library. The correction is recorded in the Library information system (PIMS), but there is no record of it in Hansard. • A written ministerial statement. This is the most immediately transparent method of correction, although, as we discuss below, even this does not provide the clear link between the original error and its correction which we would ideally like to see. 5. There is, as far as we are aware, no authoritative guidance on which of these procedures would be appropriate for specific categories of error. Mr Selous in his original letter to our Chairman drew attention to the differing practices of two government departments which had made similar errors.7 Furthermore, because there are several available options, there is no simple way of discovering whether a correction has been made. Corrections which are made by means of a letter sent to the Member and placed in the Library are not generally available to anyone outside the Palace of Westminster. Our proposal 6. We agree with the proposal of the Leader of the House that there should be a separate corrections page in Hansard. The Memorandum sets out what would be the practical arrangements for such a page. It also poses three questions for our consideration: • What should be its scope (ie what sorts of corrections and from whom)? • When should it be published? • What rules should there be on the content of corrections? 6 Ev 2 7 Ev 1 7 Scope 7. The letter from the Leader of the House focuses on errors in ministerial ‘written (and possibly oral) answers.’8 It is clear that the vast majority of cases which Members raise with Mr Speaker relate to the answers to questions. Corrections by way of pursuant answers can of course only be made to errors in earlier answers. But errors can be made in other contexts, such as statements and speeches in debate. The Memorandum suggests that a corrections page should include: written and oral answers, including those given in response to statements and urgent questions, written ministerial statements, and anything said by a Minister in that capacity in the Chamber or Westminster Hall.9 We agree with this approach. If the House is to establish a dedicated page for corrections, its scope should not be artificially restricted to a few specific types of proceeding.