Business of the House (11 July)

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

I agree with my hon. Friend, who, as so often, gets to the nub of the issue and the inconsistencies in the line taken by the business managers. Of course, we do not yet know what line officially they will take towards the sittings of the House, except that, judging by the motion, they think it desirable that we do not all have a say and that the debate be limited to two hours. I had not anticipated that we would have the chance to begin a debate on this important subject this evening.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend not agree that the scope of the private business to be debated on Wednesday—provided it is given time—is extremely narrow and that it will be a challenge, even for the ingenuity of those who hold such Bills to account, to come up with a debate lasting three hours?

[Mr Chope]

I hear what my hon. Friend says, and if he is right, that is all the more reason why we should not support this motion, because otherwise those of us who wish to debate the private business, including him, will find ourselves hanging around in the House until a three-hour debate about VAT for air ambulances has been completed. Our entitlement under Standing Orders to have our business debated between 4 o’clock and 7 o’clock will have been taken away from us, which would be very unfair.

[Bob Blackman]

We cannot anticipate the House’s decisions on the motions dealing with the sittings of the House. There may well be only two Divisions, which would rapidly truncate the voting following that debate and enable the business to move forward much more swiftly. If that were to happen, the series of Divisions that my hon. Friend has alluded to would not take place.

[Mr Chope]

We can speculate as much as we want to about what might or might not happen, but my experience in the House leads me to suppose that we always ought to look for the unexpected to happen on such occasions. We do not yet know how many amendments will be tabled to the sittings of the House motion or how contentious the debate will be on whether we should continue to have September sittings. It might all go through on the nod, in accordance with the primary suggestions of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, but it also might not. I have heard rumours about what might be the consensus emerging among Members, and my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) might have heard contradictory rumours, but essentially there is a strong onus on those who want to change the sitting hours of the House to put that case and to argue it successfully against those who would say that they have made their arrangements for this Parliament on the basis of the sitting hours that were already laid down at the end of the previous Parliament.