On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In the urgent question on the Learning Disabilities Mortality
Review earlier on, which had been published at 8 am on Friday 4 May with no press releases or advance copies in the middle of the local election results, the Minister of State for Care said:
“It is an independent document and the University of Bristol decided when it was going to be published. It was published on Friday without permission from or any kind of communication with the Department of Health and Social Care.”
However, the Secretary of State had told the House in December 2016:
“As the programme develops, all learnings will be transferred to the national avoidable mortality programme. I have today asked the LeDeR programme to provide annual reports to the Department of Health on its findings”—[Official Report, 13 December 2016; Vol. 618, c. 622.]
What the Minister of State said today cuts directly across what the Secretary of State told the House, which was that he intended annual reports to be made to the Department of Health. Since our urgent question, the programme itself has clarified this on social media. It said that following claims made by the Care Minister in Parliament,
“we would like to clarify that @NHSEngland chose when to publish the #Leder report and directed all communications.”
Given that clarification from the programme itself, has the Minister of State or the Secretary of State asked to correct the record?