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Business of the House

Will the Leader of the House arrange for the Department of Health to carry out an urgent inquiry and make a statement next week about how it sometimes answers priority written questions? Can the Department please look into the fact that when I asked an unhelpful question in September about how many scouts at the world jamboree attended Broomfield hospital to be treated and how many were asked to pay for their treatment, the Minister concerned responded by hiding behind the fact that the Department does not collect such information centrally? When I rang up the Minister's private office to complain that that response seemed to be blocking, people there helpfully considered the issue again. Ten days later, they sent me an e-mail saying that they had checked with the East of England strategic health authority and Mid-Essex hospital trust and that they were unaware that anybody from the jamboree had been treated. Last night, I received a response to my freedom of information application, which told me that 107 scouts had been treated for 173 medical complaints and that 53 of them were not eligible for free NHS treatment. I also learnt that not one had yet been sent an invoice, even though they have all returned to different parts of the world—