-
if
the Chairman of the Committee, together with a Written Answer, wished; or (iii) in an oral statement on the floor of the House or to the Committee. In the Lords, Select Committee Reports are normally debated very often before the written response has been provided. If there is any problem about a debate the Government Whips Office in the Lords should be consulted. The Government has agreed that substantive replies to Select Committee Reports will not be made in the form of answers to Written POS alone.
1)
Command Paper
Departments should bear in mind a number of points when contemplating using it. This is the traditional form of reply and further comments by the Committee are not possible until after publication. It must always be used for matters of substance.
The Secretary of the Cabinet should be given notice of impending Command Papers as early as possible and at least one month before the final proof of the publication is required, in order that adequate arrangements can be made, where appropriate, for collective Ministerial consideration, including possible reference to Ministerial Committees, and, if necessary, for the Cabinet to clear the draft. Even if the draft of a Command Paper has been considered by a Ministerial Committee, it is customary to circulate the paper to the Cabinet for information at the draft or confidential final revise (CFR) stage.
Where several Departments are concerned, the Command Paper may be issued either by the principal Minister concerned, or by several Ministers acting jointly, each Department contributing a separate section of the paper. Replies to Reports of the Public Accounts Committee are always collated and presented by the Treasury. Where a Select Committee's recommendations concern another public body, that body may reply direct to the Committee, or its reply may be annexed to the Government's.
Advance copies of any Command Paper in reply to a Select Committee Report should be made available to the Committee concerned, up to 48 hours (total not working) before publication (the counterpart of the arrangement described in para. 56 above); Committees find it helpful to be advised informally, where possible, that a reply is imminent. Advance copies may also be made available to the Press; these should normally be provided on the day of publication. Any proposal to issue advance copies to the press more than 24 hours before publication must be cleared
with No 10.
One advance copy of the final Command Paper for every committee member should be provided by the Department, free of charge. If further copies are required, the Clerk should be advised to obtain these from HMSO in the usual way. (See paragraph 16).
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