Business of the House

Jo Swinson Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will have seen today’s written ministerial statement on the subject. He will find that it says that the matter is subject to the approval of the House.

[Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)]

The coalition agreement says:

“We will bring forward the proposals of the Wright Committee for reform to the House of Commons in full”.

Does the Leader of the House understand the concern of many MPs that the motion he has put forward does not represent the Wright reforms in full, particularly in the loss of days in the Chamber for Back-Bench business? Will he be open to representations on the issue with a view to improving the motion on the Order Paper?

[Sir George Young]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. If she reads the Wright Committee report, she will see that it says right at the beginning that the proposals need to be implemented “in stages”. There is a real issue with moving straight to having 35 days in the Chamber: there would be implications regarding the amount of time for which the House sits and, more seriously, it would run the real risk of squeezing out time for the Report stage of Bills—an issue that concerns hon. Members on both sides of the House. I hope that we can debate the matter more extensively on Tuesday, but I can say that at least 27 of those 35 days will be on the Floor of the House. That is an improvement on the 12 days for set-piece debates that we have at the moment.