Speaker’s Statement

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am not asking the Minister of State what she thinks he said; I am responding to the hon. Lady’s point of order. People are entitled to offer their own views within the rules of order, and to the best of my knowledge, nothing disorderly was said. I am happy to look at the record and consult further, but the advice I have received is that nothing disorderly was said.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I suspect that most of us are in the Chamber to hear a very important application for an emergency debate on the single most important issue that has faced our country in peacetime, and the public looking in will find this spectacle completely ludicrous. Can we please move on to the important business of the House?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his comments. I hope he will understand if I say that it is not possible in these matters to please everyone. I am trying to do the right thing by listening to, taking account of and offering a response to points of order, but I am conscious, as the House will be, that we have important business to which to proceed, and I intend that we shall do so. I politely suggest that if people have already made points of order, they should not treat them as an ongoing debate. If somebody raises a point of order, and I respond to it, it is reasonable to proceed to the next person and then to a conclusion of those points of order.