Business of the House

Bob Russell Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

rose—

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

We’re all on your side.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Come and join this side, then.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir George Young]

May I repeat what I said last night in congratulating the hon. Lady on her re-election? I am grateful to her for endorsing our decision to have a conventional pre-recess Adjournment debate next Thursday, to which my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House will respond. She paid tribute to the outgoing members of the Backbench Business Committee. I am not sure whether it would enhance her reputation if I endorsed that, because the whole point of the Committee is to choose subjects that the Government would not normally have chosen, and it certainly did that under the previous regime. I look forward to working with her and newly elected colleagues during this Session, and to taking forward some of the ideas that we have shared about how we get some certainty into some of our conventional debates. I think she will understand that her party is slightly better placed than mine in being able to put Scottish Members on to the Committee. However, we have changed the Standing Orders to enable other Members to attend, and I hope that that is a move in the right direction.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

In a written parliamentary answer dated 8 March, I was told by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority:

“Under our publication scheme, we proactively publish the minutes of meetings of IPSA’s Board.”—[Official Report, 8 March 2012; Vol. 541, c. 839W.]

Thirty minutes ago, under the heading “Transparency—Minutes of board meetings”, the IPSA website revealed that the last recorded publicly accessible minutes were for its meeting on 30 January. Knowing how keen IPSA is on every i being dotted and every t being crossed, either it has not met for three months or it is not honouring what it should. Bearing in mind that a public consultation is going on as to what the public feel is the role of an MP, should we, as MPs, not have a debate on this?

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend is a member of the Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, and he will know that on Tuesday morning there is a meeting between SCIPSA and IPSA—I am sorry about all these initials—where he will have an opportunity to put to the chairman of IPSA the question he has put to me. The chairman of IPSA will now have notice of what is coming and will have in his breast pocket the answer to the question, with specific details of when his board last met.