Points of Order

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the Leader of the House for that. He will, I hope, have heard the statement from the Chair. To put it very candidly and bluntly, these announcements should be made to the House, not by the mechanism of Twitter. I think it is pretty clear.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You are used to the Government making announcements to the press before they come to the House to make them. What happened this morning is different. The press have been privately briefed and the Secretary of State for Health has come to the House still not prepared to tell the House what is in the Keogh review. Is this the first time this has happened? Do you agree that it should not happen again? Will you now order that the Keogh review is put in the Library today, so that we do not have to wait till tomorrow to find out what is in it?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. He asks whether this is the first time that this has happened. There are very few firsts in this place; most things have happened before at some stage or another. I am not sure that it is within my bailiwick to insist upon the deposit of the report today, as the hon. Gentleman rather earnestly beseeches me to do. I hope that he will not take offence when I say that he is rarely satisfied about anything. He is an experienced parliamentary hand and he knows that Members apply for permission to put urgent questions, and it is for the Speaker to decide whether to grant the urgent question. I did grant the urgent question, which carries its own message about my sense that it was important that the issue should be aired in the Chamber today. The hon. Gentleman took part, I believe, in the exercise, and I think we will leave it there for today.