Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs written statement – made at on 22 November 2006.
Kim Howells
Minister of State (Middle East), Foreign & Commonwealth Office
In his reply on
As my hon. Friend Paul Flynn has pointed out, this information was not placed in the library at the time. Having now concluded our search for all information relevant to the 2002 programme, I can confirm that we no longer hold the specific material originally referred to by Dr. MacShane. I apologise that we are therefore unable to provide this to the House of Commons Library. We have however placed excerpts from official correspondence relating to the 2002 programme in the House of Commons Library. This information has been the subject of a separate freedom of information request.
This phrase is often used in written answers to indicate that a minister has deposited some relevant information in the House of Commons Library. Typical content includes research reports, letters, and tables of data not published elsewhere.
A list of such depositions can be found at http://deposits.parliament.uk/ along with some of the documents. The Library is not open to the public, but copies of documents can be requested if they are not on that website. For more information, see the House of Commons factsheet: http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/P15.pdf
The House of Commons is one of the houses of parliament. Here, elected MPs (elected by the "commons", i.e. the people) debate. In modern times, nearly all power resides in this house. In the commons are 650 MPs, as well as a speaker and three deputy speakers.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
