Point of Order

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Government introduced a negative statutory instrument just three days before the summer recess for a pilot of managed migration to universal credit and payments to severely disabled people who lost out in transferring to it. The Secretary of State said that the Government had been advised by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments to use a negative SI, but my office has since been informed that the Committee had not reported on the instrument in question and that no such advice had therefore been given. Mr Speaker, will you please advise on how she could set the record straight?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her point of order and for her courtesy in giving me notice of her intention to raise it. Ministers are, of course, responsible for the accuracy of their answers in the House, and I am sure that the points made by the hon. Lady will have been noted on the Treasury Bench. It is open to the Secretary of State to correct the record if she thinks that that is the appropriate course of action. Moreover, I think there is a salience about this, and I understand that the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments has been alerted to the statement made by the Secretary of State and will be writing to the Department about this matter. In the light of that, I think we have to await the sequence of events, and people must draw the appropriate conclusions, both from what I have said and more widely.