Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill (Twenty Fourth sitting)

Mark Harper Excerpts

Committee Debate: 24th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 9th January 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the Committee do now adjourn.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in this new year, Mr Owen. I welcome back all Members; I hope they had a good Christmas, and I wish them all also a happy new year. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] I hope that with the new year, the Minister has had an opportunity to reflect, and perhaps has a new attitude towards this Committee. In 2018, we had a full year in which no progress was made on this Bill—what a disappointment that is. We are fast running out of time for these changes to come in before the end of this Parliament, and I hope the Minister will feel that we should get on with it.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

I will speak briefly this morning, to say to Members that as I have not been to the Committee for a while, I thought that as the new year approached it would be good to re-acquaint myself with old friends. I also wanted to say, having read the Hansard report of the last Committee meeting, that I am grateful that our good friend the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton got his Christmas present just before Christmas, as the Government did publish the immigration White Paper. I know that he was hoping for that at the last Committee meeting, so I am pleased that that Christmas present was delivered. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Glasgow East got the little note in his stocking from the Minister that he was hoping for; I suspect not.

I am looking forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about whether any progress has been made on drafting the statutory instrument. Obviously, the House’s agenda is very full at the moment with debates on European Union matters, and I know that lots of pieces of legislation that are critical to our exit from the European Union need to be dealt with, so I am not hopeful that the House will find the opportunity to consider this matter at an early stage. However, I look forward to hearing whether progress will be made at the earliest opportunity, and I join you, Mr Owen, in wishing everyone a happy new year.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

As ever, it is an immense pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen, and I extend my best wishes to all members of the Committee for a happy, peaceful and prosperous new year. I spent yesterday afternoon taking part in a debate on democracy in Uganda—an excellent debate, led by the hon. Member for Stockton South (Dr Williams). In that long debate, it struck me a little that we as Members of the British Parliament are busy quite rightly holding Uganda to account for its lack of democracy, but for almost a year, I have been taking part in a Bill Committee that is considering reducing the number of legislators who can scrutinise the Government just as more powers are coming back from the European Union, and, last year, more than 20 new Members of the House of Lords were appointed. We as Members of the British Parliament have the audacity to lecture other countries about how democracy should work when we are trying to shrink the number of people who can scrutinise the Government in this country. I will leave that thought with Members. I look forward to participating in the Committee from now until we prorogue around March, if we get that far, but it has been an absolute pleasure to be part of the Committee in 2018, and I look forward to many more meetings in 2019.