Parliamentary corrections system overhaul: Speaker responds to Full Fact's campaign
Following a campaign supported by thousands of Full Fact supporters to improve the broken Parliamentary system, the Speaker of the House, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, announced that from this week MPs now have equal power to correct the record.
Previously all MPs, except government ministers, had to rely on making Points of Order in order to amend the official record, but too few did, resulting in uncorrected claims existing on the official record.
Going forward:
- All MPs will be able to correct the official record, not just Ministers.
- The visibility of corrections will be improved on the official record. All corrections will either be footnoted in the printed version of Hansard, or cross referenced in the online portal.
- Everyone will be able to see when MPs correct the record on an easily accessible corrections page.
A general election is just around the corner, support our work by donating £10:
This announcement follows a campaign from Full Fact to improve the broken Parliamentary correction system. Full Fact submitted evidence to the Procedure Committee’s inquiry into this issue and coordinated a petition signed by 50,000 supporters calling for change to the corrections process. This change was solidified in October 2023 when MPs listened to our calls and agreed to the recommendations from the Committee.
Full Fact is calling on all MPs to use the new system whenever they find out they’ve made a false or misleading factual claim. In addition to this, we need to see additional measures that hold MPs to account when they refuse to correct false or misleading claims.
The public deserves to know that what’s in the official parliamentary record is trustworthy and that our elected representatives are honest enough to correct their mistakes, especially now that they can do so easily. We will continue to campaign for honesty in politics and to hold MPs accountable when they make false or misleading claims.