Health Minister Ayesha Verrall corrects answer to Parliament, echoing Jan Tinetti mishap

Health Minister Ayesha Verrall was forced to correct an answer to the House. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Health Minister Ayesha Verrall corrected an answer to Parliament this evening, admitting her office had stopped health data from being released because of the timing of other Government announcements.

Earlier in the day, Verrall had denied this was the case under questioning from National’s Shane Reti.

Speaking to the House shortly before the 6pm dinner break, Verrall said since Question Time she had been “advised by my office that Te Whatu Ora reported a provisional date for the data to be released on fifth of July and a staff member had said that it should not be released that week due to other announcements”.

“I have told my staff that they should not have given that direction and it is my expectation that it does not happen again,” Verrall said.

“The final date that the data was determined by Te Whatu Ora based on when the information was ready,” she said.

The swift correction brought back memories of Education Minister Jan Tinetti making a similar false statement to the House, when she said her office was not involved in the release of truancy data. The fact Tinetti took so long to correct that answer after finding she was incorrect landed her before the Privileges Committee, which found she had acted with a “high degree of negligence”.

Verrall’s swift correction, made hours after the incorrect statement, means she will avoid that fate.

But it does nothing to assuage Opposition complaints the Government is politicising the release of information from departments.

The error was made during Question 8 today, when Reti made multiple attempts to have Verrall answer how ED wait times data was released.

Reti asked Verrall: “Has she or her office had any involvement in preventing ED wait times from being publicly reported, and, if so, what involvement?”

Verrall replied: “Throughout this discussion about the importance of this data, I have maintained that it is incredibly important that this data is available and that this report was undertaken in order to make sure that high-quality data is available, and I back the team to make sure they have the right data before it is published”.

Reti raised a point of order, arguing the answer was unsatisfactory. The Speaker asked Reti to ask the question again.

Verrall responded: “I have, at the time that—no—at the reports that—the role of my office has to be—has been to request that Te Whatu Ora publish the correct data.”

Reti proceeded to ask Verrall the same question in a different way.

“Has she issued any instructions to officials to withhold ED wait time data, and, if so, when?”. Verrall’s response to this question prompted a debate on points of order.

Reti eventually asked again whether Verrall had “at any time offered instructions to her office to withhold the public reporting of ED wait time data, and, if so, when?”

Verrall replied the issue related to the quality of the data.

“There was a protracted period of time where there were concerns about the accuracy of ED data that Te Whatu Ora held, and consistently throughout that, I maintained a position that the correct data should not be released—sorry, the correct data should be released,” she said.