§ Mr. PeartI should be glad to have your guidance, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday I tabled a Question in the following words:
to ask the Assistant Postmaster-General why Cumberland television subscribers …
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. The hon. Member, I gather, is now trying to raise a point about a Question which was disallowed at the Table. In those circumstances it is quite wrong, and contrary to practice, to read out the Question in dispute.
I may say at once that I have looked into the case. It concerns a complaint that the televising of the Cup Final will not be possible in the constituency of the hon. Member because it is to be broadcast from Kirk o' Shotts, in Scotland, instead of from London. That is entirely a matter for the B.B.C. and one for which there is no Ministerial responsibility on the part of the Postmaster-General, as has been declared by successive Postmasters-General of all parties. In those circumstances, although I sympathise very much with the desire of the hon. Member that this athletic spectacle should be visible in his constituency, I am afraid that he must use his good offices with the B.B.C. and not with me.
§ Mr. PeartFurther to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. The Minister said, in answer to a Question on 26th January, that he would not reply. I am merely submitting that that could be a very 1257 dangerous practice in which a question could be decided by a decision of the Minister. What I am asking is not whether I can put down a Question, but whether I can raise the matter on the Adjournment, when I could refer to television facilities in Cumberland, which are inadequate to deal with the needs of subscribers.
§ Mr. SpeakerThere is no rule of procedure to prevent the hon. Member raising the matter on the Adjournment, if that can be contrived in the short space of time that remains to us. It certainly is not a proper subject for a Parliamentary Question. In my view, the learned Clerks at the Table were quite right to refuse it.