Points of Order

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me notice of his point of order. He has put his concerns in the public domain very effectively with what he has just said. He asks me what mechanisms there are to raise his concerns. He listed quite a few of them, so he is obviously aware of them. I am sure the Table Office will be able to advise him on any other mechanisms. The Leader of the House is here, too, and he will have heard what the hon. Gentleman had to say. I will leave it at that.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Further to the points of order made by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) on Friday and by the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) on Thursday, have you or Mr Speaker had any notification from the Prime Minister of his intention to correct the record of his claim last week that

“we have been cutting crime by 14%”?—[Official Report, 31 January 2022; Vol. 708, c. 24.]

As you will be aware, Madam Deputy Speaker, the head of the UK Statistics Authority has said that the statements about crime statistics that were made by the Home Office and subsequently repeated by the Prime Minister were “misleading”. In figures released just the previous week, the Office for National Statistics found

“a 14% increase in total crime, driven by a 47% increase in fraud and computer misuse”.

Clearly the Prime Minister needs to correct the record and be clear that crime has gone up, not down, over the past two years on his watch.

“Erskine May”, resolutions of the House and the ministerial code all say that it is

“of paramount importance that ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity.”

The Prime Minister made his comments on Wednesday; the UK Statistics Authority wrote to the Home Office and No. 10 on Thursday; there have been two previous points of order on the matter. It is now Monday. This is clearly not the earliest opportunity.

I seek your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker. What is the point of our having a ministerial code and rules of Parliament on correcting the parliamentary record if the Prime Minister continues to ignore them and does not respond to Parliament? How do we ensure that these basic rules and standards for Parliament are not just ripped up?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for notice of her point of order. As she says, the matter has been raised previously. I have to repeat my response to the point of order raised by the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain):

“Although the Chair is not responsible for the content of contributions made by Ministers, I am sure the concern has been heard on the Treasury Bench.”—[Official Report, 3 February 2022; Vol. 708, c. 566.]

I am sure it has been heard again, and if an error has been made in this instance, I am sure a Minister would want to correct it as quickly as possible.

The right hon. Lady refers to the ministerial code, paragraph 8.15 of which deals with statistics. I am sure that she will find other ways of pursuing the issue, should she wish to, but as I say, I am sure that those on the Treasury Bench will have heard her concerns once again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. As I said before, it has been made very clear from the Chair that if mistakes need to be corrected, they should be corrected as quickly as possible. We have had, I think, three points of order on this now. Again, those on the Treasury Bench will have heard the concern and will, I am sure, relay it back. At the moment, however, the hon. Gentleman is painting a hypothetical picture of the future, because, as I have said, if a mistake has been made, it is up to whichever Minister is involved to try to correct that, if they feel—as I have said—that a mistake has been made.

As the hon. Gentleman has said, the Procedure Committee is looking at this issue in the round, and, obviously, it is something on which right hon. and hon. Members in all parts of the House might wish to give evidence to the Committee.

[Yvette Cooper]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank you for that clarification, but given that, in this particular case, we have not only the facts from the ONS but the statement from the head of the UK Statistics Authority—which mean that the Prime Minister needs to correct the record—if there is no response from the Prime Minister or from the Treasury Bench, no explanation, no correction, no change to what they have put on the record, and given what “Erskine May” says, what are we supposed to do?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

There is very little that I can add at this stage, apart from saying this. There may be those who say that there are different interpretations of different statistics, so I think that, at the moment, we have to leave it as we have stated: those on the Treasury Bench have heard the concern that perhaps figures were used which are incorrect, and that if that is the case, the ministerial code says that they should be corrected at the earliest opportunity.