Points of Order

Greg Mulholland Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

First, I must emphasise that all Members can vote on this matter today. The hon. Gentleman can vote on it; I do not want him to develop—it would be sad and worrying if he did—a persecution complex. I would not want him to feel that he is excluded. The hon. Gentleman says that he is making his point of order by way of being helpful, and I cannot think I would doubt that for a moment; I do not think he ever intends anything other than to be helpful to me, to the House, to the nation and, of course, to his constituents. He certainly can vote on the matter.

The House will have been struck by the hon. Gentleman’s use of his adjective in relation to the procedure. I, of course, did not make any evaluation of the procedure. I simply made the factual point that it is not something introduced by the Speaker; it is something that the House has said the Speaker shall do. I am the servant of the House, and I am doing it to the best of my ability. The hon. Gentleman has made his own assessment of the procedure and he is, of course, as he has pointed out using other words, a distinguished ornament of the Procedure Committee. Members who wish to make representations to that Committee and to its illustrious Chairman, the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), should, of course, do so. That opportunity has been helpfully advertised.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. On a separate matter, I was astonished on Friday lunchtime to be told by a constituent that the Prime Minister was visiting the wonderful Makkah mosque in my constituency on Monday morning. Having followed that up, I received an e-mail at 4.57 saying that that was the case, but those sending it refused to tell me where the visit was—even though I had already told them that I knew! Only on Monday morning was I finally told where the visit was going to be, given that I was not told in the first place.

Apart from the “Keystone Cops” attitude to national security, given that a sitting Member of Parliament was not told about a visit that constituents did find out about, I ask your advice on parliamentary protocol, Mr Speaker. On this occasion, I did not have the opportunity either to liaise with the wonderful Makkah mosque, which does marvellous work on integration, or to speak to the Prime Minister’s Office to give him my thoughts and advice on the work the mosque does before his visit.

[Mr Speaker]

I rather imagine that the Prime Minister thinks of little else in the course of planning his day than of the merits of receiving, in such terms as the hon. Gentleman thinks fit and at such length as is necessary, the hon. Gentleman’s advice. It occurs to me off the top of my head that it would have been open to representatives of the mosque to notify the hon. Gentleman in a timely way.

On the matter of the protocol whereby Members should be notified of visits, I would say that it is best for colleagues to interpret their responsibility in this matter broadly. That is to say—I do not refer to any particular case—that rather than taking a narrow view and thinking that notification would take place at a very late stage, it is better to notify a colleague well in advance of an intention to visit his or her constituency. My own personal view is that where we are dealing with colleagues who are right hon. and hon. Members, it is a courtesy to give more information rather than less. I hope that is helpful to the hon. Gentleman and to the House. These sorts of matters tend to arise from time to time.