Points of Order — Questions for Written Answer—Replies

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I bring to your attention an issue that appears to be arising more frequently. It is to do with written questions that are submitted to Ministers. A number of Ministers are now replying that they cannot answer the question in a particular time. It is becoming a little ridiculous. Recently, when a question that had previously been asked of a Minister was asked of him again, he simply replied that he had previously answered that question, and gave the number of it, and when the answer previously given was looked up it was found that it had been that he could not answer the question in the time allowed. So the Minister was asked the question twice, and he had been able to dodge answering it on both occasions. It would seem to me that that is not playing according to the Standing Orders, and is not being at all reasonable about the accountability that Ministers have to this House. Madam Speaker, I would ask you to consider ruling that Ministers should, wherever possible, either answer in the time frame available or indicate a time by which they may answer that question, as used to be the case.

I thank the member. I will certainly look into that immediately.

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. Following on from the shadow Leader of the House’s comments, I seek your assistance in respect of written questions Nos 04226, 04227, 04228, and 04229. Each of those was an individual question to the Minister of Corrections asking for the original target budget for each of the four prisons. The response I had was that the information required to answer those questions could not be collated in the time allowed, which was 12 days. It seems very odd that that department had no idea of the original target budgets for those prisons—and it had 12 days to answer. Madam Speaker, I seek your assistance to get action from Ministers who are using this excuse, which, on the basis that the information should be readily available to those Ministers, clearly has no merit.

I thank the member. I would remind members, of course, that holding replies are acceptable in principle, but I am very happy to look into specific instances. If you would like to refer those to me, I will follow them up immediately.