§ Mr. Arthur Lewisasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will give, for the longest and most convenient stated period of time, the number of occasions when he or officials from his Department telephoned self-confessed criminals or their legal advisers to inform them of the intention of his Department to make a ministerial statement in answer to a tabled parliamentary 416W question concerning such persons' criminal activities, before such parliamentary statement has been made; and what were the reasons for such telephone calls in each instance.
§ Mr. WhitelawOccasions may arise where a person has made representations, for example, about a criminal conviction, and is given the reply to them before a parliamentary question on the same subject is answered; but it would require disproportionate effort to ascertain how many such occasions there have been.