David Winnick
Main Page: David Winnick (Labour - Walsall North)
Mr Speaker
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order. As he knows, and as others will be conscious, I am not responsible for the content—including the accuracy—of statements by Ministers. That said, if a Minister makes a factual error in a statement to the House, it is preferable, as far as I am concerned, that he or she should correct that error in the House. The right hon. Gentleman has taken the opportunity very forcefully to register his point on the record, and it will have been heard by those on the Treasury Bench. I do hope that if such instances arise again, the general guidance that I have just offered will be followed, for the simple reason that it makes sense and is fair.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. We all appreciate what you have just said, but I should like to raise another issue. I received replies on the board yesterday from the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority to a number of my questions. I shall not go into that, but the replies included a background note. That is quite a novelty, as you will know—it has certainly never happened previously, in all my experience over the years of receiving answers to parliamentary questions. I was given one answer along with a background note, which says:
“Mr Winnick has asked several other questions of IPSA,”
about whether it should do this, that or the other, and the same applied with another answer. I do not mind—presumably the background note is saying, in effect, that I am a nuisance and that IPSA wishes that I would go away—but what I want to know is whether supplying a background note will become standard practice for Ministers. Indeed, I would like to see the background notes provided by civil servants to Ministers who are due to answer my questions, so perhaps on this occasion IPSA should be congratulated on setting a commendable trend.
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what is, pretty much, a novel point of order. Whether those who penned the background note ever intended it to be seen by him is something that I rather doubt. I do not think that the Speaker should get into the business of dictating the precise form of answers to questions. However, in general terms, I am inclined to say that the answer should be the answer, and that should be all that is required. The idea that some supplementary text is either required or desirable seems to me to be wrong.