Codgers hits new ffp document row
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T ANOTHER Parliamentary row over ransport document sent to Labour rty members erupted this week. This le it was called "Transport: The vernment Record", and, it was claimed ring a House of Lords session, was eulated among Labour MPs.
,ord Harmar-Nicholls wanted to know W the Government reconciled the culation of the document by Transport nister William Rodgers with the conition that purely political exercises )uld neither be furthered by the Civil vice nor paid for out of public funds. -le was told by Lady Stedman, Under' cretary for the Environment, that the cument was a factual statement. It won material which had already been Tared by civil servants for other pur5es and there was no extra cost to blic funds.
[he document, she added, was avail.e to to Lord Harmer-Nicholls as it was to Members of Parliament.
[his did not satisfy the Peer, who said it to involve civil servants in a partyiitical electioneering exercise, and to T. taxpayers' money by the use of aded notepaper to spread the political i:pel which was anathema to half the nation, was against the conventions:\ Lady Stedman retorted that the document was a factual statement of the Government's record on transport matters. It was the type of information kept permanently up to date within the Department notwithstanding a change of Minister or even a change of Government, so that it was known what had been going on. Lord Hailsham observed that this did not necessarily dispose of the issue. He suggested that it was a new doctrine that documents should be circulated to members of a political party by a member of the Government, not in his capacity as party leader, but as a Minister.
It was, he said, important that these two relationships should be kept separate from one another, even though the facts were perfectly correct and the document was limited to facts.
The Minister had responded to a request from MPs, Lady Stedman told him. The statement was available to any Member of Parliament and to any Peer.
If a Minister was to be told that he could not give this information, then why did we hear so much about open government, she asked,