Letter from Rt Hon Jack Straw MP, Leader
of the House of Commons (P14)
CORRECTIONS TO
THE OFFICIAL
REPORT
We have not yet had the opportunity to discuss
this issue in person, but as you will recall we had an exchange
of correspondence in May and June of last year about the treatment
in Hansard of corrections to inadvertent errors to Ministerial
written (and possibly oral) answers. Your Committee had been looking
at aspects of this and took the view with which I broadly agreed
that "errors in the Official Report... should be corrected
in the Official Report". It is generally undesirable for
a correction to be made by a letter to the Member concerned which
can only be found in the Library. A number of other colleagues
on both sides of the House have made representations about how
corrections subsequently made by Ministers could be made more
easily identifiable in the Official Report.
I have tried to ensure that when colleagues
do correct the record that they do so quickly and by means of
either a Written Ministerial Statement or—where the rules
of the House permit—a pursuant answer.
However, when a correction is given there is
no clear way of identifying and linking the original response
to the correction given. Members should not have to work their
way through Hansard before finding the correction. I believe we
should change the system to make it more transparent—for
Government in acknowledging that it got it wrong but more importantly
for the Member who tabled the question. I am keen to avoid any
accusation that the Government has been less than forthcoming
with the facts.
One proposal which I would like your Committee
to look at is the establishment of a separate corrections page
in Hansard. It would be for consideration whether corrections
placed there should be limited to the kinds of corrections currently
capable of being contained within a pursuant answer, or should—as
I suspect might be more helpful to the House— include any
corrections currently outside those rules but delivered by letter.
Importantly, I would suggest that in the electronic version of
Hansard (and possibly in the bound volume if that is feasible)
the original answer as printed would then have a link to the correction.
My office has been discussing such a proposal
informally with the Editor of Hansard who is not averse to such
a change, and with the Table Office (who operate the system of
"pursuant answers" on behalf of the Speaker). I am in
no doubt that it would be more appropriate if they were to receive
the endorsement of your Committee. I think, for example, that
we would all wish to avoid inadvertently moving to a system which,
by giving greater prominence to the correction of inadvertent
errors, encourages a greater demand for "corrections"
where the issue of whether any such error has been made is in
reality a political issue. Such a state of affairs would of course
risk placing the Speaker under unwanted pressures.
I would be grateful if you could give this proposal
fair wind and consider any detailed issues on which the Departments
of the House would need closer guidance.
January 2007
| 
