§ Mr. Alan Williams (Swansea, West)On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am sorry to have to raise this matter, but I ask for your guidance. Has the Foreign Secretary made any request to make a personal statement? If not, could you give myself and the House some guidance? You will recollect that on Friday morning I tabled a private notice question and that the Foreign Secretary came to the House to explain the omission of certain critical information from his statement on 26 January.
In the course of a supplementary answer to the Foreign Secretary he referred to an interview on Thames television the evening before. He said that
The television company concerned has apologised for having put the question in an inaccurate way." —[Official Report, February 1984; Vol. 53, c. 526.]Later on, as the Foreign Secretary will be aware, the Tape carried a denial of that from the television company.Later in the day the Foreign Secretary's officials had further meetings with the television company. I understand from a telephone conversation that I had an hour and a half ago with the television company that it had still not issued any apology to the Foreign Secretary and, indeed, that on Friday afternoon it even refused to go as far as issuing a joint statement in conjunction with the Foreign Office.
If, as seems to be the case, no request has been received from the Foreign Secretary—who on Friday made great play of the fact that he had come to give an explanation of his previous mishap— how can we ensure that the right hon. and learned Gentleman comes to the Floor of the House to make a statement clarifying the statement that he made on Friday, clarifying the statement that he made on 26 January?
§ Mr. SpeakerThe right hon. Gentleman knows that I have no power or authority to ask the Foreign Secretary to come and make a statement. Nevertheless, I am sure that the Leader of the House has noted the right hon. Gentleman's point.