Pat McFadden
Main Page: Pat McFadden (Labour - Wolverhampton South East)
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for giving me advance notice of it.
Mr Speaker
I shall come to the right hon. Gentleman in a moment.
I have not been informed that a Minister wishes to make a statement in the House today on this subject. However, on the wider issues, there is an opportunity later today—this point was flagged up by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone)—in the Back-Bench business debate for the hon. Member for Blackpool South (Mr Marsden) and others to express their concerns about the matter. I have a feeling that some of them might be tempted to take that opportunity.
Mr McFadden
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Can you give us your guidance on the appropriate procedures for a Minister to come to the House and correct factually inaccurate statements made in the Chamber? On 22 June, the Deputy Prime Minister told the House that the reason the Sheffield Forgemasters loan was not approved was that the company’s owners
“did not want to dilute their own shareholdings in the company”.—[Official Report, 22 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 148.]
On 1 July, the Prime Minister repeated the point, saying that
“there was opportunity for them…to get more equity into the business if they wanted to…dilute their own shareholding”.
Yet this morning’s newspapers reveal that, in a letter to the company’s chief executive on 2 July, the Deputy Prime Minister said:
“You explained to me the composition of equity holdings in the company including your own stake and made clear your own willingness to dilute your equity share”.
Mr Speaker, this letter clearly contradicts statements made by the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister to the House, and I am sure that you will agree with me that it cannot be right for factually inaccurate statements to be made publicly in the House and then corrected purely by means of a private letter. Given that today the company has announced that it is suspending work on the 15,000 tonne project for which the loan was proposed, what is your advice on when it would be appropriate for the Deputy Prime Minister to come to the House and admit publicly that the Government’s justification for this decision has been admitted by him to be wrong?
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.