Points of Order

Andy McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 24th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In answer to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) at Prime Minister’s questions about the dealings at Teesworks, the Prime Minister said that

“the Levelling Up Secretary has already announced an investigation into this matter.”

But the Secretary of State has not responded to the requests last week for a National Audit Office investigation from the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), and from the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee, so we are in the dark. Will you advise me on how we can seek clarity from the Prime Minister on when this investigation was ordered and on what terms?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for giving me notice of his intention to raise this matter. He knows that Minister’s responses are not a matter for the Chair, but I understand that he is making a serious and apparently well-founded criticism that information has been given from the Dispatch Box that does not appear to accord with the facts as he understands them. Ministers on the Treasury Bench will have heard what he has said, and I hope that his concerns will be passed on to the appropriate Minister. There is no doubt that what is actually done should accord precisely with what is said to have been done. Of course, he has other recourse, through the Table Office, to finding other ways of raising this matter on the Floor of the House.