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Ministers are accountable to Parliament for the Government's policies and actions. As a consequence they provide the House of Commons with a great deal of information. Under the Ministerial Code and the House's resolution on Ministerial Accountability to Parliament they have a responsibility to ensure that that information is correct. This responsibility is taken seriously by the Government, but from time to time errors are made. Considering the amount of information provided, these occasions are rare.
Currently there are various ways in which Ministers may correct such inadvertently made errors. Some of these are not widely publicised and can be difficult to track down. We believe that this is unsatisfactory. Since the mistakes are recorded in the Official Report (Hansard), the corrections should appear there too. There should also be clearer links between the error and the correction.
We therefore recommend that there should be a dedicated section of Hansard in which all corrections should appear. This 'corrections page' should be published whenever a correction is made. It should be separately identified in the table of contents and have its own column numbering.
We recommend that it should be used for corrections to errors made by Ministers in any proceedings in the Chamber (e.g. including answers to written and oral questions, statements and debates), in Westminster Hall and, in some circumstances, in general committees. It should also be used by other Members who answer on behalf of certain bodies (such as the House of Commons Commission and the Church Commissioners).
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