Business of the House

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Gentleman is asking about who will be called to speak, and I can tell him that that is a matter for Mr Speaker.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

The Leader of the House is making a mockery of the procedures of the House of Commons. This is not the same as a First Reading and a Second Reading. The difference here is that a motion of the House is already in existence for the debate to take place today and tomorrow, yet she is going to ask her Whips to perpetrate the fiction of saying that the debate will continue tomorrow when she has already announced that we are going to debate the Ivory Bill, because she is afraid that if she put the question to a vote of the House, she would lose. She knows that she would lose, so why will she not just be honest with the House and admit that?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I have been absolutely clear with the House that the Prime Minister has listened to the views of the House as expressed in recent weeks and that she is determined to address the concerns that have been raised. The House needs to be presented with a withdrawal agreement and a political declaration that Members across the House can support. The Prime Minister made it quite clear that she did not feel confident that Members would be able to support it and that it would therefore not be in the national interest to go ahead with it until she had managed to address those very real concerns.