TNAG-1841-FCO40-2616-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-enquiry-1989 — Page 52

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26 January 1988 (see Annex D), and if witnesses are questioned on such matters they must decline to give specific answers. There is, however, no objection to pointing out in general terms that consultation between Departments runs through the whole fabric of government and occurs at all levels both official and Ministerial.

33. Departmental files will tend to concern the matters referred to in paragraph 30 above, and Departments should consult their Ministers, and should also advise the Office of the Minister for the Civil Service, when dealing with any request by a Committee to see or have quoted verbatim any interdepartmental correspondence or internal minutes. The PAC is in a special position in view of the C&AG's access to departmental papers, and in considering any request from the PAC for access to departmental papers the Treasury should be consulted in addition to the Office of the Minister for the Civil Service. special case of the Select Committee on the Parliamentary Commissioner, it may be necessary to quote from departmental documents in connection with Parliamentary and Health Service Commissioner cases. But it is not the practice of the Committee to require evidence which would amount to the "retrial" of a Parliamentary or Health Service Commissioner case.

Policy

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Official witnesses, whether administrative, professional or Services, should as far as possible confine their evidence to questions of fact relating to existing Government policies and actions. Officials should be ready to explain what the existing policies are and the objectives and justification, as the Government sees them, for those policies, and to explain how administrative factors may have affected both the choice of policy measures and the manner of their implementation. open to officials to make comments which are not politically contentious but they should as far as possible avoid being drawn, without prior Ministerial authority, into the discussion of alternative policy. If official witnesses are pressed by the Committee to go beyond these limits, they should suggest that the questioning be addressed, or referred, to Ministers. If there is a likelihood of a material issue of policy being raised by a Committee in its questioning of official witnesses, Departments will wish to consult Ministers beforehand. (On appearance by Ministers, also see paragraphs 7-8.)

35.

A Select Committee may invite specialist (as opposed to administrative) civil servants to discuss the professional or technical issues underlying controversial policies. This may raise particular problems in the case of, for example, economists, if Committees discuss issues of economic reasoning which bear upon controversial policy questions and which are also matters of technical and professional controversy among

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