Business of the House

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I detect the serious mobilisation of the armed forces on the Benches behind me, pressing for a further defence debate. As my hon. Friend knows, we have provided one day and, as I said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), between now and the end of the Session, now that most of the major Bills have gone through the House, there may be headroom to provide some of the debates that were provided in Government time in the previous Parliament but which, for whatever reason, have not been forthcoming so far in this one.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that I apologised to the Economic Secretary to the Treasury for my patronising tone in my question to her on Monday, but will he ask her to come back and apologise to the House for misleading it when she claimed that unemployment under the previous Government reached 30%?

[Mr Speaker]

Let us hear the response from the Leader of the House, but I must say, while I note what the hon. Lady has said, that we need to be very careful about accusing Members of misleading the House. She may wish to insert the word, “inadvertently”.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I am sure that it was inadvertent. Perhaps the Economic Secretary would come to the House and explain how she arrived at that figure.

[Sir George Young]

In fairness to the hon. Lady, I welcomed what she said at the outset of her remarks about apologising for any offence that she may have caused my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary. I will draw my hon. Friend’s attention to this exchange, and ask her to write to the hon. Lady clarifying the use of the figures and, I am sure, justifying any figure that she used in the Chamber.