Business of the House

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mark Spencer]

Ultimately, it is a commercial decision for the airport’s owners. I know that this topic is close to your heart, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to your constituency. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his work to highlight the challenges in respect of Doncaster Sheffield airport. I will of course mention the issue to the Secretary of State for Transport, but I encourage my hon. Friend to apply for an Adjournment debate so that he can get all his concerns on the record and hear directly from the Secretary of State.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I am very cross with the Leader of the House. Not only did he refuse to have a meeting with me this week—the first time, I think, that a Leader of the House has ever refused to have a meeting with the Chair of the Standards Committee—but he says he is going to reply to our Committee’s report on all-party parliamentary groups by writing to the Speakers, when it has nothing to do with the Speakers: our Committee has produced the report and the Government have so far failed to produce a response.

The Government have also failed to produce a response to our new code of conduct, which significantly strengthens the code. I would have thought that this House, at this particular moment, would be keen to consider that as a matter of urgency.

As I understand it, the Commission has finally got around to interviewing the wonderful candidate we proposed from the panel to be the new Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, but there is still no motion on the Order Paper. Will the Leader of the House please get on with all these things? Or has he just been off to all the parties with the Prime Minister? It feels as if the Government are not working—get on with it, man!

[Mark Spencer]

The hon. Gentleman did request a meeting, but last Thursday he stood up in the Chamber and said that I was about to get the sack; there did not really seem much point in meeting him if he was convinced that I was not going to be the Leader of the House in September. I suggest that he requests a meeting with his new Leader of the House—whoever has that privilege.

I assure the hon. Gentleman that we are going to move the motion on the new Standards Commissioner very early in September. I have no desire to upset the hon. Gentleman; it is my desire and intention to make him happy, if at all possible. I know that is an aspiration that I will never achieve, but I am committed to trying to assist him in his work, not frustrate him.