Jeremy Kyle will not appear in front of MPs after turning down their request.
The talk show host was called to appear in front of a committee investigating reality TV earlier this month.
It comes after The Jeremy Kyle Show, which the TV star fronted for almost 15 years, was axed after the death of Steve Dymond just days after he appeared on the ITV programme.
Senior executives involved in the show will appear in front of MPs at a hearing on June 25, but the star's representatives told the committee he would not give evidence.
DCMS Committee chairman Damian Collins said: "The Jeremy Kyle Show is an important programme we will be looking at as part of the inquiry into reality television.
"We believe that Jeremy Kyle himself should be an important witness to that, as the show is based around him as the lead presenter of it.
"We have sent an invitation to Mr Kyle through his representatives and we have received word back from them that he has declined to appear in front of the committee on Tuesday next week.
"We believe that Mr Kyle is an important witness to the committee in its work and we will be pursuing this matter with Mr Kyle's representatives to see if we can find a date when he will appear or to understand fully the reasons why he is not able to appear.
"We will make a further statement once those discussions have concluded."
A spokesman for Mr Kyle declined to comment on his absence from the committee.
ITV's chairman Sir Peter Bazalgette and chief executive Dame Carolyn McCall will appear before the committee as well as Tom McLennan, the executive director of The Jeremy Kyle Show, and Graham Stanier who is director of aftercare at ITV and responsible for the welfare of participants in the show, Mr Collins said.
The DCMS committee will consider production companies' duty of care to participants and ask whether enough support is offered both during and post filming.
This in turn should decide whether there is a need for further regulation.
Mr Dymond, 63, died around a week after reportedly failing a love-cheat lie-detector test on Kyle's confrontational daytime programme.
The construction worker was found in his room in Portsmouth on May 9 after splitting from on-off fiancee Jane Callaghan.
The decision to launch the investigation comes also after the deaths of two contestants on Love Island which faced intense scrutiny before its launch at the start of June.
Former Love Island contestants Sophie Gradon, 32, and Mike Thalassitis, 26, were both found hanged within a year of eachother.
