Points of Order

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I think that the point of order raised by the hon. Lady stands on its own. She has made her point with force and alacrity and the reason for her scoff is well understood.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your guidance in uncharted territory. We have not had a fixed-term Parliament before and visits to constituencies by Ministers become much more sensitive in this clear run-up to an election. I heard at 5.38 pm last Thursday that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions would visit Kirklees college in the heart of my constituency at 11 am the next day. If that was an official visit, it would have been a courtesy to tell me that he was coming so that I could perhaps have been there to welcome him. I understand that Colne Valley and Dewsbury are highly sensitive marginal seats nearby, but this was an official visit, presumably paid for by the taxpayer, in the run-up to an election that we know will be on 7 May. What is the status of such visits and should there not be the usual courtesy of telling a Member when a Minister is visiting their patch?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. He asks what is the status of such an arrangement. The short answer is that it is a convention; it is not a requirement of parliamentary procedure or of our Standing Orders. That said, I think it is very much to be preferred that the convention should be observed, as it is for the most part by Members on both sides of the House. Notification, by definition, must take place before the visit, but in order to comply with the spirit of the convention, it seems to me reasonable that Members should have adequate notice of, in particular, official visits, so that if they wish to be present, they have the chance to be so. I do not in any way diminish the significance of the hon. Gentleman’s point or of what I just said when I note that the honouring of that arrangement has frequently been as much in the breach as in the observance, and that, I think, is regrettable. It is not a point applied to one side rather than the other.

I know that in the past, long before I was elected to the Chair, visits were made to institutions within my own constituency of which I did not have what I regarded as anything like adequate notice in order to be able to decide whether I wished to be present. I appeal to colleagues to be considerate and solicitous in these matters, because a colleague who does not observe the convention is not only doing the wrong thing, but wholly disabling himself or herself from subsequently complaining if the convention is not honoured when his or her own constituency is affected. I think that deals with the matter.