Points of Order

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I have received no such indication from either Department. My advice to the right hon. Gentleman is to think forward to Tuesday 21 January, when there will be oral questions to the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and his team. The right hon. Gentleman might think that a suitable opportunity to raise the matters of concern to him. Who knows? He might be successful either on the Order Paper or in seeking to raise a supplementary question.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Last week, the Cabinet Office released confidential documents to the National Archives relating to the then Government’s covert intervention in the 1984-85 miners’ strike. The documents confirmed what the National Union of Mineworkers and the Labour movement fully suspected at the time, but many people in the mining communities and the UK as a whole were alarmed to learn that senior Ministers and, indeed, the Prime Minister deliberately misled the people of this country. Have you been approached, Mr Speaker, by the present Government wishing to apologise and to put the record straight regarding the then Government’s real intentions back in 1984-85, which were to close 75 pits, not 20 pits, as they insisted? If not, will you advise the House how this injustice can be rectified by the House?

[Mr Speaker]

The short answer is no; I have received no such approach. It is, of course, open to the hon. Gentleman to seek an Adjournment debate, in which he could set out his thoughts more fully and elicit a response. I have a sense that that is a course that the hon. Gentleman will in all likelihood follow.