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98. If a civil servant (or a Minister) receives a copy of a leaked Select Committee report, he or she must not make any use of it or circulate it any further. The report should be returned immediately to the Clerk of the relevant Select Committee. No copies should be taken.
99. Select Committee Reports are made formally to the House rather than to the Government although, given their subject matter, most of the recommendations tend to be addressed to the Government.
100. Under the terms of House of Commons Standing Order No 134, interested Departments and the media will normally receive embargoed copies of Select Committee Reports up to forty-eight hours before publication. While Committees are usually helpful over this, such advance issue is at their discretion and Departments cannot insist on seeing copies. If publication of a Report is known to be imminent. Departments may wish to contact the Clerk on an informal basis to establish the likely timetable.
101. As soon as possible after an embargoed copy of a Committee Report is received, a short note (not more than two or three pages) should be prepared on the main points, especially difficult points, with brief lines to take where necessary (bearing in mind the guidance on immediate comments on Reports at paragraphs 104-107). This should be faxed to the Parliamentary Clerk at No 10 to arrive before publication of the Report concerned. In the event of a Department receiving the Report only on the day of publication, a short note should still be put urgently in hand to reach No 10 on the same day. Copies of the briefing should go in parallel to other Departments with an interest in the Report. This requirement stands for Reports published during the recess as well as when Parliament is sitting.
102. Receipt of an embargoed copy of a Select Committee report also enables Departments to prepare briefing for use by Ministers and press offices for comment on the Report as soon as it published. Such immediate comment is, however, subject to certain rules and conventions and should avoid giving instant conclusions on recommendations in Committee Reports before there has been time to consider them carefully. The briefing may consist of a Press Notice, issued to coincide with publication of the Report, or simply of material for the Departmental Press Office to use in response to enquiries. In either case it should be borne in mind that journalists will be working on their embargoed copies to a similar timetable so that media enquiries may arise almost as soon as these copies are available. Any information provided should be subject at least to the same embargo date as that of the Committee's report.
103. Where a Select Committee Report concerns more than one Department, the Department with the major interest should co-ordinate the Press briefing, though Press enquiries may be answered by the other Departments concerned on the agreed lines.
104. The basic principle in giving immediate comment on Committee Reports is that Departments should be careful not to pre-empt or prejudge the Government's final and considered reply to the Committee's recommendations which must first be given to Parliament. This means that comments given to the media or in other statements, especially outside the House, on publication of the Report, or in the intervening period up to the delivery of the Government's reply, should not seem to anticipate that reply.
105. The Government's position on these conventions was set out in a letter of 5 June 1990 from the then Lord President of the Council to the Chairman of the Liaison Committee.
This:
(a) reaffirmed the convention that Departments may respond immediately in order to correct mis-statements of fact, to provide background information, or to draw attention to particular passages in the Committee's Report or in the published Government evidence the Committee;
(b) asserted the right of Ministers to respond publicly to criticisms of the Government as robustly as seemed appropriate; this would include criticisms in the Committee's Report itself, inaccuracy or mis-statement in media reporting, or public criticisms made by individual Committee members;
(c) confirmed that it was not the Government's intention that recommendations in Committee Reports should be subject to snap responses without detailed Government assessment. Nonetheless Ministers would feel free to respond immediately to certain recommendations, either positively or negatively, where the Government's policy was established and clear, or where an early response was needed in order to influence fast-moving events.
106. Similar considerations apply to immediate comment on Reports from the Committee of Public Accounts (PAC). In the case of Reports to the PAC from the National Audit Office (NAO), it is important that immediate comment should not pre-empt any subsequent PAC hearing with the Department's Accounting Officer. Comment should therefore be confined to quoting or amplifying material contained in the NAO Report itself (including expressions of departmental views), providing relevant information and correcting any mis-statements of fact or interpretation in media coverage. Any comments in these circumstances should also observe the 1968 Treasury undertaking to the PAC that immediate comment would not be controversial; but this need not preclude straightforward factual correction of media reporting.
107. Departments' public comments on NAO and PAC Reports which have financial implications, or which might affect substantively the subsequent Treasury Minute, should be cleared first with the relevant Treasury expenditure division.
108. Departments should aim to provide the considered Government response to both Commons and Lords Select Committee Reports within two months of their publication. Where a report is complex or technical in its nature, the response may on occasion require a little longer: the Committee should be kept informed. In the case of Joint Committees, the two month target should apply, unless a longer timetable is agreed with the Committee.
109. The two month target may not always be possible to achieve as Committee Reports tend to address issues which require consideration in depth and this may involve consultation both within and outside Government before a substantial reply can be provided. If it appears that preparing a response is going to take longer than it should, the Department should write to the Committee (at Ministerial level to the Chairman or at official level to the Clerk) explaining the reasons and indicating the likely timetable. Only in exceptional circumstances should a response be deferred for more than six months after the Report's publication. A further option is to provide an interim response within the set period and a fuller response at a later date.
110. If these deadlines mean that a response falls due in the summer recess, the Committee may prefer publication of the Government response to be held over until Parliament reconvenes. Liaison Officers should consult the Clerk on the Committee's preference.
111. In considering the form which the Government's considered response to a Select Committee Report should take, it is important to remember that the response must in all circumstances be made first to Parliament, either to the House itself or to the Committee. Replies usually take one of the following forms: (a) a Command Paper presented to Parliament; (b) a Memorandum or a letter to the Chairman of the Committee; or (c) an Oral Statement.
112. Replies in the form of (a) or (b) may be made in conjunction with an oral or written ministerial statement; but the Government has agreed that formal replies to Select Committee reports will not be made by means of written PQ answers alone.
113. Where a Select Committee's recommendations concern another public body as well, that body may reply direct to the Committee or its reply may be annexed to the Government's response as appropriate.
This is the traditional form of reply on matters of substance and is addressed to Parliament as a whole, rather than directly to the Committee.
Arrangements should be made where appropriate for collective Ministerial consideration and cleared through the relevant Cabinet Committee. Collective Ministerial agreement is likely to be required if the response touches on the responsibility of other Government Departments or is otherwise likely to be politically controversial.
Where several Departments are concerned, the Command Paper may be issued either by the principal Minister concerned, or by several Ministers acting jointly. Replies to Reports of the Committee of Public Accounts are always collated and presented by the Treasury.
Advance copies of any Command Paper responding to a Select Committee Report should be made available to the Committee concerned up to forty-eight hours before publication (the counterpart of the arrangement described in paragraph 100). Committees also find it helpful to be advised informally, where possible, when a reply is imminent. Advance copies may also be made available to the media. These should normally be provided on the day of publication. Any proposal to provide copies to the media mote than 24 hours in advance must be cleared with No 10.
One advance copy of the final Command Paper for each Committee member and the Clerk should be provided by the Department, free of charge. If significantly more copies are required, the Clerk should be advised to obtain these from the publisher in the usual way (see paragraph 38).
A Memorandum by a Department to the Committee, or a letter from a Minister to the Chairman may be a more readily applicable form of response to less substantial recommendations. Unlike a Command Paper, such responses are, formally, further evidence to the Committee and are therefore subject to the usual conventions on submitted evidence (see paragraphs 80-83). The Committee will normally decide to publish such Government responses itself, either without comment or with a further commentary on the points made in the response. Alternatively, Committees may, on request, agree to publication by the Department. This is usually done by the Department placing a copy of the reply in the House Library and drawing attention to it by means of a written ministerial statement.
If the Government's response is made in an oral statement on the floor of the House, whether in a separate statement or as part of a wider Ministerial speech, the Department should write to the Committee as early as possible drawing their attention to the statement and, if appropriate, making it clear that no further written reply is envisaged.
114. The existence of an ad hoc Committee may end with the making of its report. In these circumstances, the Government response should be in the form of a Command Paper. The Clerk of the former Committee should be kept informed, as for an existing Committee, and copies should be provided for the members of the former Committee.
115. There is no obligation to reply individually to every point made by a Committee: some may be general pronouncements or observations: some may be directed not to the Government but to the House itself (for example, certain recommendations of the Procedure Committee) or to other bodies; some may conveniently be dealt with in one omnibus comment. A report may also contain observations by the Committee which, while not in the form of a recommendation, may nonetheless warrant a response or statement of the Government's views.
116. In the period between publication of a Committee's Report and the formal Government reply, there need be no constraint on Departments taking action on its recommendations. However, if such action is taken the Committee should be informed, a Parliamentary announcement should be considered, and in any event the formal Government response to the Committee should refer to the action taken (see also paragraphs 65-66 on Ministerial statements). Similarly, if a decision on a recommendation is made, or if a recommendation is implemented some time after the formal reply has been given, the Department should write to the Committee to make them aware of the fact.
117. A copy of all Government replies to Committee recommendations, in whatever form, should be sent to the Leader of the House of Commons or to the Leader of the House of Lords as appropriate.
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