Points of Order

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Monday 7th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Emma Lewell (South Shields) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. At Prime Minister’s questions last week, the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) raised the difficult ongoing issue, which my constituents and I have been involved in for a number of years, of Northumbrian Water dumping sewage into the North sea at Whitburn. Please can you offer me some advice, as I believed it was still a convention and courtesy of this House that the right hon. Member should at least have informed me he was going to wade into this matter?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving notice of her point of order. Can she confirm that she has notified the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) of her intention to raise this matter in the House?

[Emma Lewell]

indicated assent.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

While Members should certainly inform colleagues when they intend to table a question about a matter relating to a colleague’s constituency, the same rule does not apply to supplementary questions at PMQs. The leader of the Liberal Democrats was making a broader point about the ownership of Thames Water. None the less, the hon. Member has put the matter on the record, including her own campaigning on sewage dumping at Whitburn.

[Tahir Ali (Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. On 28 March, I shared on social media the work that I and colleagues from across the two Houses have been doing to urge the Government of Pakistan to build an international airport at Mirpur. This is an important issue for over 1 million British Kashmiris, who overwhelmingly come from there, and who face delay and danger while travelling from Islamabad to Mirpur. The reactions to that post, including from some Members of the House, have resulted in our being subjected to Islamophobic, racist attacks and harassment. The hon. Members for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe), for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O’Brien), for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) and for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice), all of whom—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. The hon. Member should not be criticising other Members for their social media posts in that way. I thank him for giving notice of his point of order, which may have gone slightly further than the notice he gave, but he has eloquently put his concerns on record.