Business of the House

David Nuttall Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

Shortly.

I was asked two more questions, one of which was about VAT. May I remind the right hon. Gentleman of what his party said about VAT before the election? The shadow Home Secretary has said:

“ultimately we made no hard commitment on VAT. That was partly the traditional caution of governments, wanting to keep options open.”

When pressed on this, the then Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), has said:

“The advantage of VAT is it brings in a lot of money. It would have allowed you to have done you know a lot to take down the deficit”.

So it ill behoves Labour Members to criticise us for what we have done on VAT.

Finally, on IPSA, I am a statutory consultee—as Leader of the House—under the relevant legislation, so I will indeed be submitting evidence to IPSA in due course.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

May we have a statement on the Government’s plans, contained in the coalition agreement, to allow petitions with more than 100,000 names to be debated in this House?

[Sir George Young]

I thank my hon. Friend for reminding the House that the coalition agreement contains that commitment to introduce e-petitions, with those that reach a certain level—100,000 names—becoming eligible for a debate in the House. That is an important step in building a bigger and stronger bridge between this House and those we represent. I have already had some informal discussions with the Procedure Committee about this and I will have further discussions, both with that Committee and with the Backbench Business Committee. I think that this would be a very appropriate subject for the House to debate, if it wished to do so.