§ Mr. Arthur Lewisasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will give for the longest and most convenient period of time the number of occasions where he has answered parliamentary Questions giving details and figures which subsequently he found to be incorrect where he has written to the Member to explain and apologise; and in how many such cases he arranged for the hon. Member to put a further parliamentary Question for correction purposes rather than insert a correction into the bound volume of the Official Report.
§ Mr. Merlyn ReesIn the 1976–77 Session, a total of 2,138 Parliamentary88W Questions were answered by Home Office Ministers in the House of Commons. Of this total, five were discovered to contain factual errors and in each case a letter of apology was sent to the hon. Member concerned giving the correct information. In two of the cases the hon. Members were invited to table a further question; in the other three cases the correction was made in the Bound Volume of the Official Report.
In the present Session—up to 15th May—of the 1,811 Parliamentary Questions answered by Home Office Ministers, four have been found to contain factual errors and in each case the correction has been or will be made in the Bound Volume of the Official Report.