Business of the House

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

My right hon. Friend said that the Executive has handed this responsibility to the Backbench Business Committee, but it was the House of Commons that handed it to the Committee. We have implemented the Wright Committee’s recommendations in full. Paragraph 145 of the Wright Committee report makes it clear that the debate to which he referred is one of those that has now been transferred to the Backbench Business Committee. It is up to that Committee to schedule all debates in the 35 days we have transferred to it. The hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, will have heard my right hon. Friend’s plea, and it is now up to her and her Committee to see whether, out of the days we are allocating to it, the fisheries debate qualifies for consideration.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

Following on from that point, I note that the usual debate ahead of the European Council is now said also to fall within the remit of the Backbench Business Committee. May I gently suggest that that means a complete and utter abdication of the responsibility to discuss matters European on the Floor of the House at the initiation of the Government, and not Back-Bench Members?

[Sir George Young]

I hate to disagree with the hon. Lady, whom I congratulate on winning The Spectator award last night at a very moving ceremony. It was richly deserved. I say to her gently that paragraph 145 on “Set piece debates” in “Rebuilding the House”—the report by the Wright Committee—mentions

“two days for pre-European Council debates”.

It makes it clear that those debates transfer to the Backbench Business Committee. This is not the Government imposing something on the House; it is the House taking away from the Government responsibility for fixing its own agenda. I support that, and I hope that she does too.