§ Mr. Michael Heseltine (Henley)On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Owing, perhaps, to my relative inexperience in the practices in which I now participate, may I refer you to the reply that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister gave me in which she referred to a possible point of order? It would have been my fault if there was a misunderstanding, but I did hear the word "order". I was not addressing a point of order in any way to you, Mr. Speaker. If I created confusion, I apologise at once to the House. I was asking my right hon. Friend a serious question. Because it was overtaken by the concept that it might be a matter of order, I do not think that my right hon. Friend was able to answer it. Is it possible for that question to be answered now, as it is relevant and urgent? Events are taking place that could be influenced by my right hon. Friend's reply.
§ Mr. SpeakerI think that the Prime Minister may have misunderstood the question. It occurred to me that she thought it was a point of order addressed to me. In those circumstances, I think that the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) might try again on Tuesday and get his answer then.
§ Mr. Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough)On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it not a fact that, when a Secretary of State for Trade and Industry quotes from official documents, those documents should then be placed in the Library?
§ Mr. SpeakerSuch documents should be laid, but in this instance I do not think that, there was a quotation from a document.
§ Mr. HeseltineFurther to the point of order, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate your generosity in suggesting that the answer should be asked again on Tuesday, but I would beg you to understand that meetings will take place before Tuesday to which the answer is relevant. I therefore would be grateful if I could ask that question now.
§ Mr. SpeakerIt would be quite irregular for me to allow Question Time to go on. Virtually every day hon. Members feel that they have not got the answers that they wanted to their questions. The solution for the right hon. Gentleman would be to put down a written question today, to which he could get an answer tomorrow morning.
§ Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours (Workington)Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. The issue is whether the quote was from an official document. If it was from an official document let it be placed in the Library. The question we are all asking is: was it a quote from an official document? If it was, will it be placed in the Library? That is the point that the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) wishes to make. It is a perfect point of order and I ask that he be allowed to press it on the Floor.
§ Mr. SpeakerI have already dealt with this matter. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I have dealt with the matter. I have already said, and I say it again, that if Ministers quote from an official document, as opposed to paraphrasing an official document, it is our rule that that official document should be laid.
§ Mr. Richard Hickmet (Glanford and Scunthorpe)Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I ask for your guidance? Is it in order for the processes of the House 1210 to be abused by the Labour party through the preparation of a document in the Labour party office containing 12 planted questions—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—to be put today to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, to the Foreign Secretary and to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry? Is this not a synthetic outrage being manufactured by the Labour party?
§ Mr. Max Madden (Bradford, West)rose——
§ Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover)rose——
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. I have not seen that document.
§ Mr. MaddenFurther to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. You said just now that you believed that the Prime Minister had misunderstood the question put by the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine). As I understood the question that he was seeking to put, he wished the House to know whether the quote made last. night by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry was a direct quote. Owing to the importance of this matter, which was the subject of a full day's debate yesterday, and of important events which are to take place tomorrow, perhaps you might allow the precedent, which occurs from time to time, for Ministers, including the Prime Minister, to answer particular questions. In today's circumstances, as you have said that you thought that the Prime Minister had misunderstood the question you might allow the question to be put again.
§ Mr. Peter Shore (Bethnal Green and Stepney)Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. This is almost a unique misunderstanding. I do not think I have ever heard a question put in the House to the Prime Minister which has been misinterpreted by the Prime Minister, or for that matter by any other Minister, as being a question to you in the Chair as a point of order. It is a material question. Obviously if the document was quoted from directly and can therefore be released, it would be a material matter affecting the public response to the various proposals that are before the Westland company. In these circumstances, and to resolve for the House and everyone concerned the difficulties we are in, surely it is possible for the Prime Minister now to be given leave to reply to the direct question.
§ The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher)On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I do not think I did misunderstand the question. The question as I understood it was that if there is an intended and direct quote from a document, and a speech gave a direct quote from a document, and said it was directly quoting from a document, the whole document should be laid. The first thing is, therefore, to check Hansard to see whether what was said was given as a direct quote from the document. That is the first thing that we must find out. What follows from that is a matter for the House, not for me.
§ Mr. SpeakerI think—[Interruption.] Order. I am on my feet. I think that the Prime Minister has dealt—[Interruption.] I think—[HON. MEMBERS: "No"] Order. It is not a matter for me. The Prime Minister has dealt very fairly—[Interruption.] Order. I believe that the right hon. Lady has dealt fairly with the question that was put to her, and which I confess I thought she may have misunderstood. I now understand that she did not misunderstand.
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. I am not taking any more points of order on this matter—[Interruption.] Order. These are not matters for me.
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. I was originally asked whether I would allow an answer to be given to the question. I said—and it was an act of generosity—that I would allow the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) to put his question again on Tuesday. He replied that the matter was so urgent that it required an answer today. The Prime Minister has now given that answer. There is nothing more that I can do about the matter.
§ Mr. Neil Kinnock (Islwyn)Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I believe that the way in which this matter has developed leaves you in an invidious position—clearly through no fault of yours. My understanding—and I think that it is generally shared among hon. Members—is that the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) asked a question, during the course of which he used the word "order". I thought that he was addressing a question to the Prime Minister, asking whether she would give permission for him, as he put it, to finish a quotation. It was a request to the Head of a Government of whom, until last week, he had been a member.
That was misinterpreted not by the Prime Minister, as she has acknowledged, but more generally as being a question of order relating to the convention that if an official document is referred to during the course of the proceedings of the House, that document should appear in full in the Library.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Callaghan) referred to this matter on Monday. I am speaking about the convention in general terms. The problem is that if a Minister refers to an official document, effectively that Minister can determine whether the document receives more general circulation by deciding whether to acknowledge that he is quoting directly from it.
1212 That convention put you, Mr. Speaker, in an absolutely intolerable position because once such references are made, it is natural that other hon. Members—whether Opposition or Government—will ask under which set of rules they fall.
I am not making an appeal now, because you have made your decision clear, Mr. Speaker, and I would not ask you to reverse it. However, in the interests of the House, and as it is possible that the right hon. Member for Henley has overheard this exchange, he could rise on a further point of order and clarify precisely what he meant. Secondly, it may—[Interruption.]
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. I ask the House to allow me to hear the point of order.
§ Mr. KinnockSecondly, it may occur to the right hon. Member for Henley that there are other procedures, even during the course of this afternoon, that he might employ to secure an answer in this House.
If that were generally recognised, I am sure that we could terminate what might otherwise become an extremely long exchange of attempted points of order.
§ Mr. Cranley Onslow (Woking)Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I think that the whole House clearly heard my right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) refer to column 1167 of yesterday's Hansard. Since a reading of that column nowhere suggests that my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry was quoting from any document other than the notes of his speech, this is not a matter that should detain us any longer.
§ Mr. SpeakerI have the page from Hansard in front of me, and during the course of the exchanges I have been looking at it carefully. I cannot see that the right hon. and learned Gentleman quoted from any document yesterday. I say to the Leader of the Opposition that there is a distinction between referring to a document and quoting directly from it.