(10 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberI hope so, too: I will take your guidance on that, Mr Deputy Speaker. We are talking about whether we should have a choice, not about the nuances of what businesses think would happen if we were to leave the EU. Nobody is proposing to leave today. Is it in order for the shadow Foreign Secretary to major on the debate in that way?
It is for the Chair, as you, as a member of the Panel of Chairs well know, to make that decision. That is not a point of order.
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. This is a very pertinent point. I would like to tease out something about the intermediate option that the right hon. Gentleman is talking about. Would he like to have means-testing of current social housing tenants? As we know, some of them earn lots of money.
Order. I am going to have to help. The hon. Lady was going to speak next. She will not mind going down the list a little bit, because it is unfair to keep intervening. The right hon. Gentleman has already taken nine minutes. I want to get everybody in and these interventions are not going to help when someone knows they are going to speak next.
(11 years ago)
Commons ChamberOrder—[Interruption.] Order. That means you, too, Mr Rotheram. Let us calm down. The hon. Lady has made a statement and I think Mr Twigg would like to have caught her eye, but it is up to the Member who has the Floor whether they want to take an intervention.
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The hon. Lady did not show me or the House the courtesy of allowing me to intervene after she referred to something that I had said. Does she accept that the figures that she has given are from before the bedroom tax was introduced? This year, Liverpool city council will certainly spend the entire discretionary housing pot.
That is not a point of order, but it was certainly a point of clarification.
As I was about to say, unicorns do not exist, fairies do not exist and—it does not matter how often Opposition Members say it—a bedroom tax does not exist. I found it very interesting when we all looked at our Order Papers yesterday and there it was: we were going to discuss a bedroom tax. Funnily enough, however, we are not discussing a bedroom tax, because it does not exist and it would be procedurally out of order for us to debate it. The mishmash of today’s debate has been rushed through because the Opposition realise that by closing their eyes and saying the wishful words “bedroom tax” they cannot conjure one up—it does not exist. If they consult Tolley’s tax guide, they will see that they are being financially illiterate—
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberOn a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is calling a right hon. Member a poodle parliamentary language?
It was not a named Member, but we should be careful with language because we are in danger of reheating the Chamber, and that is what we do not wish to do—because we all want to hear each other’s speeches.
(12 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberOn a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am delighted that the hon. Members for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) and for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso) have put it on the record that they will look at this matter again. If decisions are made that do not accord with what has been stated in this debate, however, what recourse might we have to bring the matter back before Parliament?
I think the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso) has given his word, and I am sure that he is a man of his word and that we do not need to bring that into question today.
(13 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberOrder. That is not a point of order, because the accusation was not against individual Members.