Procedure Committee Reports

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I hope that this is a point of order; I am still somewhat feeling my way in this place. There is another debate this afternoon, which was brought about by the Backbench Business Committee as a consequence of one of the first e-petitions. I might be wrong, but I understand that this debate can carry on until any hour. Judging by the number of colleagues who are standing to speak, it looks as though the second debate will get less time than a Westminster Hall debate. If that is the case and the second debate gets squeezed out, I hope that the Leader of the House, who is in his place, will consider giving it injury time at some point because it is an important debate that affects the constituents of a large number of Members.

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Leader of the House tried to protect the debate in which my hon. Friend has an interest by tabling a motion last night. Sadly, that was blocked by a member of the Backbench Business Committee.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I am very concerned about the time that this debate is taking. I will reduce the time limit on speeches and hopefully, if we have some brevity, we will get to the second debate. The high speed debate is important to this House and people will not understand why we are spending so much time on ourselves and our use of hand-held devices. As important as this is, we need to make progress as quickly as possible.