Alan Milburn, the health secretary, will be the first cabinet member to be summoned to appear before parliament to explain the failure of his ministry to answer questions from MPs, a Commons committee is to announce today.
The unprecedented hearing to be held by the Commons public administration committee follows a damning report today which singles out his ministry as one of the worst in replying to MPs.
The ministry admits it was involved in the "systematic falsification in recording the handling of parliamentary questions" and ran a system that was open to abuse which led to the suspension of a member of staff. It also took 10 months for the ministry to respond to inquiries from the committee and it had a backlog at one stage of over 400 unanswered questions to MPs.
The rest of the report shows how individual departments - from the prime minister's office to the Department of Culture - evade MPs' questions and often fail to cite why the information cannot be released. The committee concludes by calling on the government to "ensure the public interest is put above all other considerations by increasing the openness of parliamentary answers".
It cites a swathe of replies where ministers refused to release information, from trivia like ministers' holiday arrangements, to more serious matters like Lord Irvine, the lord chancellor, keeping secret information about complaints against judges.
It reveals a systematic refusal at the Department of Culture, the PM's office and the former department of local government, transport and the regions, to answer questions about the millennium dome. This included the financial value of the dome, the zone construction costs, sponsorship deals, catering contracts and debts to suppliers.
The report also cites:
· The Home Office withheld from MPs the cost and numbers of police protecting Senator Pinochet; and the details of individual settlements of racial discrimination claims.
· The Department of Trade and Industry keeps secret the Post Office's costs of processing benefits.
· The former agriculture ministry also withheld details of which farmers got the 10 biggest subsidy payments from the European Commission because it was commercially sensitive; similar reasons were given for details of applications for approval for pesticides and information on the value of beef exports.
Tony Wright, the Labour chairman of the committee, said: "The government needs to put a stop to this lottery of accountability, which shows a cavalier and unprofessional attitude to MPs. We are determined to hold to account any department, and any minister, with the wrong sort of approach to questions."
