Business of the House

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I know that my hon. Friend has been a tireless campaigner since her election on trying to secure local improvements, and that she has campaigned on the issue of the Chickenhall Lane link road in her constituency and will carry on doing so. Many of these decisions are now taken locally, in discussions with county councils about what projects should be prioritised for the future, but we will continue to look for ways of investing nationally and providing financial support for local and regional authorities to ensure that we provide the improvements to infrastructure that we need to keep the traffic flowing and to ease the kind of air pollution pressures that come from long traffic jams.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

I thank the Leader of the House for the business statement and for notice of the two days of Backbench Business Committee debates to be held on 14 and 21 January. I am glad to say that, before the Christmas recess, we were pretty much up to date with our waiting list of debates to be tabled, and we now have almost a clear deck. I am therefore putting out an appeal to hon. Members across the House for applications for business on those two days.

[Chris Grayling]

I commend the hon. Gentleman and his Committee for the work that they do. I also echo what he says. For the Backbench Business Committee system to work well, we do need colleagues from all parts of the House to come forward with topics for debate. In recent weeks, we have seen requests for the traditional annual debates on veterans, policing and so on. It is very much my hope that those traditions will continue, so I encourage Members to go through the appropriate channel of the Backbench Business Committee, where I suspect there will be a receptive ear.