Source · Select Committees · Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee
Recommendation 17
17
Publication process for major policy documents consistently breaches Ministerial Code principles
Conclusion
It is our assessment that in none of these examples can we be satisfied that the general principle has been met by the publication of relevant documents associated with major policy announcements. It is not clear how Members of the House were meant to be aware that the documents were available, and the use of imprecise terminology further exacerbated that situation. In all cases, there were no accompanying written ministerial statements, which 36 could have been used to provide helpful information about the process around the announcement and the availability of relevant documents. Furthermore, the timing and extent of trailing and pre-briefing of the substance of statements examined by the committee, in our view, could reasonably be concluded to constitute a breach of the general principle set out in the Ministerial Code, regardless of whether the document was properly laid or not. (Conclusion, Paragraph 54)