Conduct Of The Prime Minister (No. 4)

EDM number 774 in 1991-92, proposed by Brian Sedgemore on 27/02/1992.

That this House condemns the Prime Minister for seriously if inadvertently misleading the House when in answer to a question put to him by the Leader of the Opposition on Tuesday 25th February about which taxes the Prime Minister would raise to pay for election bribes the Prime Minister replied 'If he had done a little more research and had seen the evidence that I gave to the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee in 1987, he would have seen then...that I indicated that it would be right in a downturn to borrow money in a recession'; notes that this assertion by the Prime Minister simply does not accord with the facts; notes that Downing Street aides are desperately trying to cover up for the Prime Minister by referring to an answer given to the Hon Member for Bridlington in November 1988 at a select committee hearing about the arithmetic ratio of public expenditure to gross domestic product in booms and slumps and about low growth projections; notes that no mention of borrowing was made and that the answer did not contain even a whisper about borrowing to finance tax cuts at any time; and accordingly calls on the Prime Minister to apologise to the House.

This motion has been signed by a total of 28 MPs.