Procedure committee
Debate between Charles Walker and Wes Streeting
Mr Walker
The Procedure Committee has deliberately steered away from looking at the sitting times of the House, but during the last Parliament, we pledged to conduct a survey of Members’ views on sitting hours at the end of the first year of every new Parliament and to bring forward a neutral motion that Members could then amend. I hope that will provide the hon. Gentleman with some comfort. He will get an opportunity at some stage in the near future to look at the sitting hours of the House, at which point I imagine that everything will be up for debate.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
I should like to assure the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) that, as a new Member and a London Member, I did make an effort to turn up on Fridays early in the Session. However, I am afraid that I now have to write back to my constituents to explain that my time is better spent in my constituency. I welcome the report from the Procedure Committee, and I hope that it will give people more confidence in Back-Bench business. Given the Chair of the Committee’s experience of previous attempts at parliamentary reform, does he agree that the risk now is that perfect will be seen as the enemy of good, and that we need to build as much consensus as possible for at least some reform, if not perfect reform?
Mr Walker
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point, and I really hope that the Government are listening to him. Let us try to build some consensus and find a way forward. I do not think that we are going to come up with a perfect solution, simply for the reason that every happy thought that occurs to Back-Bencher should not become law, as I said earlier. However, I would just say that in my time in this House, serving under two different Governments, I have observed that the people who specialise in talking out Bills are very good at talking out Opposition Back-Bench Bills but they seem to go missing in action when it comes to a Government handout Bill. That applies to Members on both sides of the House.