AT first glance, it appeared to be another case of a Minister refusing to answer questions about the controversial MMR vaccine.

It was not the first time Julie Kirkbride had asked a Parliamentary question on the issue of the triple measles, mumps and rubella jab.

She asked a good many on the subject of whether baby Leo Blair had had the thing or not, for starters.

And it was not the first time she had failed to get a reply (Leo's dad, Tony, dug his heels firmly in and got really rather grumpy, saying it was none of her business).

But it turns out the explanation as to why a question about the advice doled out to parents when the MMR injection was introduced in 1988 was not answered for weeks is a different matter altogether.

Health Ministers thought it had been answered and that is certainly what one of the civil servants in charge of such matters told them. But it turns out the civil servant had not completed the task after all.

And the unnamed individual is now under investigation for falsifying official records to cover up his failure to answer Julie's question - along with around 400 others.

In what was believed to be an unprecedented announcement, the Health Secretary, Alan Milburn, expressed his regret to the MPs whose protests about the slowness of the replies prompted the investigation.

There has been a serious failure in honouring that commitment which I deeply regret, he said.

This week, Julie's answer finally turned up, and it was hardly worth the wait.

It said that parents should get their children immunised with the MMR jab, rather than single injections.

It is, of course, single injections that Julie wants to see re-instated.