Business of the House

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks about the House of Commons Commission Bill. We have certainly done everything we can speedily to implement his Committee’s excellent report, and we will continue to do so.

I will be publishing that analysis. The right hon. Gentleman wrote to me about this yesterday. The analysis is almost complete. There are several different ways of cutting the numbers in making such an analysis, so it has been a bit of a task for the officials doing it, but I will ensure that it is placed in the Library of the House pretty soon.

[Sir George Young (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

Further to that question, on Tuesday my right hon. Friend announced that he and the Prime Minister had selected option 3 as the best one on English devolution—a decision with which I wholly agree. He went on to say that this option would be

“put forward to Parliament and the country”.

Can he confirm that it will take place in that order?

[Mr Hague]

I can confirm, as ever, my earnest hope that it takes place in that order. There is a very good case for this to be debated in Parliament before the general election. As I have indicated before to my right hon. Friend, we are having discussions within the Government about how to structure such a debate. Those discussions have not yet been concluded, but they are going on vigorously.