Sittings of the House

Debate between Graham Stuart and Iain Stewart

Wednesday 11th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

I rise briefly to support the options not to change our arrangements. As my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) said, there is a good balance at the moment.

I will make two points. The first, and most important, is that nothing that we are debating today would change our work load. We can debate the order in which we deal with it, but our work load would not be diminished one iota by these proposals.

I have listened carefully to the argument that some hon. Members have made that an earlier point of interruption on Tuesday would give us greater flexibility in organising our business. I do not accept that. Tuesdays for me, and I suspect for many other Members, are the critical day in the week, when I have to cram in many competing requirements. My Select Committee sits on Tuesdays. This Tuesday, there was also a Westminster Hall debate that I wanted to fit in and there were various other meetings. Those bits and pieces could not be moved to the end of the day. If the main business in this Chamber was brought forward, the amount of time available for those other important matters would be restricted, to the detriment of our ability to do our jobs.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I am torn on the proposals for Tuesdays, but I am quite clear that moving the sitting time forward an hour on Wednesdays would disrupt the work of Select Committees, such as the Education Committee, with very little benefit. Wednesdays work. Whatever else the House votes for, I urge it not to vote to change Wednesdays.

[Iain Stewart]

I concur with my hon. Friend.

My second point has not been made in the debate thus far. It concerns our friends at the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. I fear that if the point of interruption gets earlier, IPSA will deem that it is not appropriate for many Members to stay in Westminster overnight and will require them to return to their constituencies. I faced that problem in my first few months in the House, and three to four hours a day were added on to my work load. I ended up having four and a half hours’ sleep a night, which is not sustainable. I fear that if we moved the moment of interruption forward, IPSA would conclude that more and more Members should be forced to commute. That would not be helpful to Members’ health or their ability to conduct their business.