Points of Order

Catherine McKinnell Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

She does not wish to do so. In that case, I will say to the right hon. Gentleman that the content of ministerial answers, notwithstanding the practice in previous Parliaments, is not a matter for the Chair. If he is dissatisfied with the answer he has received, or what he regards as the lack of an answer, he may wish to raise the matter with the Procedure Committee.

I note in passing that, on the back of his nearly 26 consecutive years of service in the House, the right hon. Gentleman is as canny as most in the deployment of opportunities open to Members to eke out of Government information that is important to him. Moreover, as Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, he may be aware of other means by which Ministers may be held to account, and is perhaps in a position himself to apply those means. We will leave it there for now.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am sure the Deputy Prime Minister did not intend to mislead the House when he incorrectly claimed, in response to my question at Deputy Prime Minister’s questions this morning regarding the local government settlement to Newcastle city council, that it was shutting all arts venues in Newcastle. That is blatantly not true. Owing to the very difficult local funding settlement, the council has proposed a variety of cuts to grants awarded to arts organisations, which represent roughly 15% of the funding stream, which is no doubt a difficult decision, but it is far from shutting all arts venues in the city. Given the alarm that such a statement could raise among my constituents in Newcastle upon Tyne, could you advise me on how best I may go about correcting the record in regard to the Deputy Prime Minister’s statement?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her point of order. I can say with confidence that the Deputy Prime Minister would not deliberately mislead the House, for that would be a serious transgression and I know that he would not commit it. Whether he has done so is not altogether obvious to me, but the Deputy Prime Minister will have heard, or if he has not done so, will very soon come to hear of the content of the hon. Lady’s point of order, and if in the light of it he judges that the record needs to be corrected, it is open to him to do so. On top of that, she has put her concerns on the record and it is open to her, if she judges it necessary, to pursue the matter with the right hon. Gentleman in correspondence and in other ways. That is the best guidance I can give her for now.