HC Deb 09 November 2000 vol 356 cc366-7W
Mr. Spring

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to his reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) of 6 March 2000,Official Report, column 499W, if he will estimate the cost to date of providing (a) rebuttals of press articles on Europe and (b) his Department's Euro-myths web page; who selects the items which require a rebuttal; and from where he obtains the information to be used in the rebuttals. [136102]

Mr. Vaz

I correct press articles which contain factual inaccuracies about Government policy towards Europe or our membership of the EU drawing on information held by the FCO and other Government Departments. These correctives are sent to the publication concerned and are now also published on the FCO website. There are no dedicated FCO staff assigned to this task. The only dedicated costs are of faxing or e-mailing the corrective letters, ie the cost of a local telephone call.

Forward to