Points of Order

Gerald Kaufman Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I hope that I made clear in the most uncompromising terms, on behalf of the House, my view of unauthorised disclosures in response to the point of order raised yesterday by the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell). On that occasion I made the point—which I must reiterate today—that at this juncture what has been raised is not specifically a matter for me, but a matter for the Committee itself to investigate.

The Committee may wish to establish how this came about, because I think that all Members who care about this place would unite in deprecating it in the strongest terms, because of the unfairness to the Member concerned and the rank discourtesy to the institution of the House of Commons.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I wish to raise with you the extraordinary conduct of 10 Downing street in relation to correspondence from Members of Parliament.

On 26 April, I wrote to the Prime Minister at the request of a constituent. During the last half hour I have received a reply from 10 Downing street, signed “Mrs E Adams, Direct Communications Unit”, saying that my letter has been diverted to receive a response from a Minister in the Treasury.

When I telephoned Mrs Adams to ask why the diversion had taken place, I was first transferred to someone in the correspondence unit, who told me that Mrs Adams did not speak on the telephone. I said that as she had written to me, I assumed that she was capable of speaking to me on the telephone. I was then transferred to someone who described herself as “head of the correspondence unit”, who said that Mrs Adams did not exist and that hers was a computer-generated name. Presumably, hers is also a computer-generated bogus signature.

It so happens that I have been a Member of the House of Commons for nearly 41 years, and that in the past whenever I wrote to a Prime Minister, that Prime Minister replied to me personally, whichever party was in office and whether I was a Back Bencher or a Front Bencher. During the past year, this Prime Minister has not once replied directly to any letters that I have sent him, but has diverted them to other Departments.

I ask for your guidance, Mr Speaker. Can you tell me first why the present Prime Minister does not answer letters as his predecessors have, and secondly what extraordinary events are taking place in 10 Downing street as a result of which it sends letters from someone who does not exist and expects people to accept that?