Points of Order

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am very happy to answer the right hon. Gentleman, and I am extremely grateful to him for raising this point. There are two responses to him. The first is that in the selection of panels that make judgments of this kind, it is perfectly normal practice to vary the membership from one instance to another. There is nothing disorderly, irregular or particularly surprising about that, and I am sorry if he thinks that there is.

Secondly, I say to the right hon. Gentleman, whom I recall raising the point before about an alleged or perceived conflict of interest in respect of the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) on account of her chairmanship of the Public Accounts Committee, that I thought when he raised the point before it was a poor point, and it has not improved with time. There is no conflict of interest at all. I also say to the right hon. Gentleman, who I am sure would wish to be consistent in what I will describe as his thesis, that if he wishes to pursue that line of argument, which I believe to be erroneous, he would presumably apply it also to the Chair of the Finance and Services Committee, the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), in front of whose Committee the Clerk can periodically appear. He did not make that point about the right hon. Gentleman—rightly, because he would have been wrong to do so, and he is similarly wrong to keep making that point in respect of the right hon. Member for Barking.

I think the House will agree that I have set out the matters with crystal clarity, and I have done so a number of times. I would hope that, having had the point made to them a number of times, people would see it and acknowledge its veracity.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Given that modest pauses seem to be the order of the day, may we have a modest pause in bogus points of order made not, as is usually the case—[Interruption.] I did not heckle my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant), and I will thank him not to heckle me—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I simply say to the hon. Member for Lichfield: try showing some basic courtesy and manners of a kind that people who attend to our proceedings would wish to hear. He made his point, and it was decisively dealt with by the Chair. I hope he will afford the courtesy to the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) to raise his point of order without interruption.

[Dr Lewis]

Inasmuch as people who raise bogus points of order seek to shout me down, I shall just continue to make my points that much more clearly.

A modest pause in bogus points of order would be appreciated, given that they are emanating not from people who seem concerned about the wider issue but from people who are rather more concerned to damage the particular occupant of the Chair on any issue that takes their fancy.

May I instead, within the rules of order, ask whether it is possible to set on the record my pleasure, and I hope that of the whole House, at the announcement on the parliamentary website that our late and much missed friend Paul Goggins is to have a memorial prize instituted in his name by the all-party group on poverty and the Webb Memorial Trust? I hope that hon. Members will alert their constituents to this fine memorial to a very fine individual, who is much missed by all of us.

[Mr Speaker]

I thank the hon. Gentleman in particular for what he has just said about the late Paul Goggins, which I think will command universal assent in the House. He was a remarkable man who pursued his politics on the basis of the issues, not on the basis of personalities.