§ Mr. AllenTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list those categories of parliamentary questions on which it is the policy of his Department not to answer, together where known with the date of the blocking answer.
§ Mr. Archie HamiltonIt is our policy to answer all parliamentary questions. However, successive Governments have judged that there are a number of defence-related matters on which it would not be in the national interest to offer detailed comment; among these are operations, intelligence and security.
It would involve disproportionate cost and effort to list the dates of past answers which reflect this policy.