Business of the House

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I heard approving noises coming from my Front-Bench colleague, my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan). I also point to this Government’s record during the pandemic: we saw those services as needing support, and followed up with action. I thank my hon. Friend for his helpful suggestion, which has gone down well with my colleague.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Sunshine Pre-School, which serves families in my constituency on some of the lowest incomes, is facing closure, and several other constituents have written to me because their children have had their nursery places withdrawn due to staff shortages and funding problems. Clearly, this is a national problem. It is not, as the Government seem to think, a question of ratios of staff to children: it is about the failure of funded early learning rates to keep up with costs. Can we have a debate on the crisis in childcare, to urge Ministers to bring forward proper support for that vital social provision which is so important, not only to parents, but to supporting economic growth?

[Penny Mordaunt]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: those services are incredibly important for children’s development and to support families, but also to enable people to remain in work and progress through work. I will raise that matter, which I know is a concern across the House, with the Department for Education. Colleagues involved in the work the Government have been doing on early years, to take a more holistic approach to that whole area and make sure it is doing what parents need it to do, will also want to hear the hon. Gentleman’s remarks.

Business of the House

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

The last thing the Speaker wants to do is to mislead the House. I have just been shown what appears to be conclusive evidence that the team eventually lost 3-2. I had been advised of a 2-1 victory, but perhaps it was a 2-1 lead. Apparently, the team lost, but they had a great time. There are magnificent players in that team, and I think we should celebrate the merits, commitment and passion of the women’s parliamentary football team. They may have lost the battle, but they will win the war.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

It is almost three years since I reassured students at Sheffield Park Academy, in my constituency, that the Government were acting to introduce sharia-compliant student loans. That was on the basis of a pledge made in the higher education White Paper, which had just been published at that time, but nothing followed. In May this year, the universities Minister implied that the issue would be addressed by Philip Augar, but his report, published last week, barely mentions it. May we therefore have a statement from the Education Secretary on when the Government intend to fulfil their promise to Muslim students?

[Mel Stride]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that issue of sharia-compliant loans on behalf of pupils at Sheffield Park Academy. Within the Treasury, that comes under the responsibilities of the Economic Secretary. As the hon. Gentleman has suggested, the Department for Education also has important input on it. If he would like to contact me, I would be happy to make sure I facilitate appropriate contacts with the Treasury—if that is appropriate—and certainly with the DFE.

Business of the House

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

My hon. Friend makes an important case. I think she should join up with the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Ben Howlett) to secure a debate on the benefits of sport.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Within the last hour, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills—ignoring the concerns expressed by the Public Accounts Committee, the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee and this House—has announced that it is pressing ahead with its plans to close the BIS policy office in Sheffield. Will Ministers come to the House to explain why they have signed off on a decision that adds to the Department’s operational costs, flies in the face of the Government’s policy of moving civil servants out of London and fatally undermines claims about the northern powerhouse?

[Dr Coffey]

I understand that the Department has issued a written ministerial statement today—[Interruption.] Or it is due to issue one. The decision was reached after consultation with staff and trade unions. It has been a difficult decision, but the Department has chosen to base all policy roles in London by 2018. The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills is sitting on the Front Bench, and I am sure that he will have heard the hon. Gentleman’s concerns.

Private Members’ Bills

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the procedure for debating and voting on Private Members’ Bills.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I thank the good number of MPs who are present and who have expressed an interest in speaking. I also thank the Deputy Leader of the House of Commons and my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), who will be wrapping up for the Government and the Opposition respectively.

A debate on parliamentary procedure would not normally generate much interest outside this estate, but the level of interest may be rather different this morning, because many members of the public have become disillusioned with some of the things that we do in Parliament, and no more so than with the charade of those Fridays when we discuss private Members’ Bills.

Some of the most progressive legislation by Parliament in recent decades has come through private Members’ Bills: the suspension and then abolition of the death penalty, the partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality in 1967 and the Abortion Act 1967—all the result of private Members’ Bills advanced by Back Benchers and given time by the Government. Between 1997 and 2015, however, across four Parliaments, of the 1,977 private Members’ Bills introduced, only 103 became law. Since many of those were Government handout Bills, the number of private Members’ Bills with which an individual Back-Bench Member was able to make a difference to law and society by bringing forward a Bill was tiny.

That is no surprise when we see what happens to private Members’ Bills under the existing system; when a small number of MPs are present in Parliament to discuss Bills because MPs know there is only a very small chance of them being enacted; when Bills are talked out by an even smaller number of usually Conservative Members, whose only aim is to stop them being voted on; when serious Bills about serious issues are not given serious consideration or the chance to become law; and when most private Members’ Bills do not get discussed at all and those that do rarely get a Second Reading vote. The system is broken.

The procedure for debating and voting on private Members’ Bills is dishonest and misleading. It is an expensive and frustrating waste of time. What happens on Fridays in this place not only brings Parliament into disrepute, but feeds the cynicism that increasing numbers of people feel about politics and politicians. It does us no good service.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate on a really important issue, which I have personal experience of, with my High Cost Credit Bill in the previous Parliament. Does he agree that sorting the system out will contribute significantly to rebalancing the relationship between Parliament and the Executive, and that one of the practical issues we need to look at is how to prioritise private Members’ Bills according to their degree of support, as well as the possibility of using Tuesday evenings, to avoid conflict with constituency work on Fridays?

[Jeff Smith]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I will come to some of those issues shortly. He is right, which is why tackling the matter is important, as he says.

I will try to be brief, because a lot of Members who want to have a say are present, some of them with extensive experience of this issue, and because my suggestion is quite simple: if we want to do something in this place, let us do it properly. If we are going to allow a system in which Members may bring forward Bills, we should have a system that allows those Bills to be debated properly and voted on.

The Procedure Committee is looking at this issue, and I hope our debate will help to inform its deliberations. In its current review, the Committee has taken evidence from a whole range of people: the Leader of the House, the shadow Leader of the House, Back-Bench Members, parliamentary officials, journalists, charities and the Hansard Society. When the Committee reports, I hope that this time the Government will act on the findings, because as hon. Members might know, the Procedure Committee also discussed the issue in the last Parliament. The Committee accepted that the system was flawed and came up with some proposals for change, so that private Members’ Bills would at least be put to a vote at the end of Second Reading—not as much of a change as I would have liked, but progress nevertheless. It was disappointing, however, that the Government found no time to debate or endorse the Committee’s proposals in the last Parliament.

I hope that the Procedure Committee will have more success this time around. Last time, the Government rejected the first proposal and did not even respond to the second proposal, so perhaps this will be third time lucky. I also hope that better progress will be made in this Parliament, because it is now widely agreed that the system is flawed. I do not often quote a Conservative MP, but I completely agree with what the Chair of the Procedure Committee, the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), said:

“In their current form private members’ bills are a cruel deception that we play on our electorate.”

I agree, because the existing system gives a false promise to the public—that the procedure for private Members’ Bills will result in meaningful legislation and make a difference to their lives.

I do not want to get too bogged down today in talking about the technicalities of parliamentary procedure. We could talk for a long time about process—I will make a couple of suggestions about that—but other hon. Members present also have suggestions, and I look forward to hearing them. What is more important is the wider principle: the false hope that the process gives members of the public, who think that they might be directly affected by what is being debated, and the impact not only on constituents, but on the reputation of Parliament, as the existing system fails the public.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2015 Commons Chamber

The Leader of the House was asked—

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

1. What assessment he has made of the implications for the House of the proposals for the restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

9. What assessment he has made of the implications for the House of the proposals for the restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster.

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Chris Grayling)]

We intend to establish a Joint Committee of Parliament on the restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster. I expect this to be established before the summer recess. The Committee, which will be co-chaired by the Leaders of both Houses, will consider the independent options appraisal report, which was laid before both Houses on 18 June, as well as related evidence. It will then make recommendations to both Houses on a way forward, taking account of costs, benefits, risks and potential timescales.

[Paul Blomfield]

Too many decisions affecting the country as a whole are made by people who view them through the prism of their personal experience living and working in London. Does the Leader of the House recognise that moving Parliament out of the Palace of Westminster not only is the most cost-effective approach to restoration, but provides a unique opportunity to take decision making out of the metropolitan bubble; and will he think seriously about temporary relocation to one of our great northern cities, such as Sheffield?

[Chris Grayling]

I think that is the third or fourth representation I have had so far to locate Parliament in an hon. Member’s constituency. I suspect—

Summer Adjournment

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I do not want to comment on the many interesting contributions this afternoon, but I want to pick up one point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) about the minimum practice income guarantee, which has been in the public eye in the way it affects practices in London, but also has had an impact across the country. In fact, five GP practices in Sheffield are affected, including two in my constituency. I have pressed Ministers in Health questions and met NHS England, and I have had a similar experience—warm words and reassurances but no sign of significant practical action to alleviate the impact on those practices working with the most challenging patients in the city. Those practices face a tipping point, and I join her in urging the Government to reconsider the withdrawal of MPIG over the next seven years, because, if they do not, a number of practices will fall by the wayside.

That was not what I rose to speak about. These debates provide a useful opportunity for us to reflect on the past year and to learn lessons for the remainder of the Parliament. I am proud to represent a multicultural constituency in a multicultural city, and I want to talk about a community that I have worked with over many years but which is feeling increasingly beleaguered: our Muslim community. It is long established in Sheffield—over three or four generations—and I have worked with it for more than 30 years, challenging extremism, since long before I was a Member of Parliament. I have to say that the extremism we have challenged over that period has largely come from the white community: from the National Front, the British National party, the English Defence League and others.

The community now feels threatened. A community leader said to me recently:

“People feel under attack all of the time, not in a physical way, but that they’re always under suspicion.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) described the problem very well in a recent article in The Guardian. She said that

“this lazy discussion (practising Muslim = extremist = on the conveyer belt to terrorism) is getting just a little tired”.

The members of my local community are not just tired of the narrative, but worried about it. People who have worked for years to promote community cohesion say to me that the situation has never been worse. We have to act on this lesson for the remainder of the Parliament, because a toxic public discourse is developing in which religious conservatism, political extremism and national security issues are often dealt with as one when it comes to the Muslim community.

Everyone in this place has an important role in helping to frame that public discourse—today we had a significant debate about the issue in Birmingham schools. The bullying and intimidation of staff; improper employment and governance practices; the promotion of one branch of a faith to the exclusion of others; and a lack of financial transparency are issues that we have to take extremely seriously and which should be investigated seriously, as they have been, but to frame them as an Islamist plot and to link them to terrorism by appointing the former head of the Metropolitan police’s counter-terrorism command to investigate is profoundly unhelpful, because it fuels division, rather than reducing it. As another of my Muslim constituents told me recently,

“Everything you do is questioned, by the Government and by your neighbours. Muslims are seen as terrorists.”

The press plays a role in creating such a climate. Newspaper headlines linking the appalling events associated with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, in Iraq and Syria, with threats to the UK, as reflected in a recent Daily Telegraph headline, “Are the British jihadists going to turn their guns on us?”, fuel enormous suspicion. A recent article in the Evening Standard on women jihadists told the story of two 17-year-old British girls arrested at Heathrow and went on at length about the threat posed by women converting to Islamic terrorism, before pointing out that they had been released without charge. We have even witnessed hysteria over people eating halal meat. The Daily Mail described that—in a front-page horror story—as

“a stealthy takeover of Britain’s supermarket shelves”.

The way in which we frame discussion and the way in which we address issues need to be approached carefully. It was not helpful for the Prime Minister to contribute an article to the Daily Mail which was accompanied by a front-page headline reading “Be more British, Cameron tells UK Muslims”. A debate about British values is fine, but let us be careful how we frame it. Let us also recognise that when the Prime Minister talks about

“a belief in freedom, tolerance of others”,

it is not helpful for some of his Back Benchers, at the same time, to introduce private Member’s Bills to legislate for what women can and cannot wear.

All this is not without consequence. According to Tell MAMA, a voluntary organisation with which some Members will be familiar—it measures and monitors anti-Muslim attacks, and, unfortunately, its funding has been withdrawn by the Government—the number of attacks on Muslims increased significantly over its last reporting period, between May 2013 and February 2014. That contrasts sharply with the general figures produced by the police and the Government on hate crime incidents.

Careless words cause real damage. As we look forward to the remaining part of the current Parliament, there are three things that we could do. First, all of us—on all sides—need to be enormously careful about the way in which we use language, and the Government in particular need to think carefully about the way in which they frame their debate on British values. Secondly, we need to recognise the good work that is done in all communities to tackle extremism, and to recognise that extremism exists in all communities. Thirdly, we need to work harder at building community cohesion. It would be useful for the Government to reflect on the decision to cut the budget of the Department for Communities and Local Government for community rights, integration and the big society from £38.6 million in 2013-14 to £27.2 million in 2014-15, at precisely the time when we need to work harder to build community cohesion. If we fail to rise to that challenge, we shall be driving communities apart when we should be pulling them together. Let us make those our objectives for the remaining months of this Parliament.

Business of the House

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is, of course, right. One of the most interesting aspects of recent years is that, notwithstanding assertions—not least by the Labour party—that the flexible labour markets that are so important to our economic prosperity would simply enable employers to lay people off, it is because we have flexible labour markets that employers have felt confident enough to take people on. What we need to do now is build productivity in those markets, and that depends on business investment. The Office for Budget Responsibility’s report forecasts strong prospects for business investment, and I believe that the doubling of the investment allowance that was announced in the Budget will enable it to be a strong element of our future economic prosperity.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Yesterday, following a resolution passed by its city council, Sheffield became the first city in the United Kingdom to support calls for the international recognition of Somaliland. Since 1991, the people of Somaliland have made great progress in establishing a stable country with a freely elected Parliament and an independent judiciary. May we have a debate on how the British Government can do more to use their influence in the international community in order to secure recognition of Somaliland?

[Mr Lansley]

I am, of course, aware of the issue that the hon. Gentleman has raised. He may have an opportunity to raise it with Ministers during Foreign and Commonwealth Office questions next Tuesday, and also with other Members who may be interested in Somaliland and Somalia, and, in particular, may welcome the progress that Somaliland has made in recent years.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

All right hon. and hon. Members in this Chamber are equal. That is perhaps not the answer that the hon. Gentleman seeks, but it is the answer that he is going to get, especially as his attempted point of order was just that—attempted. It was many things but it was not a point of order.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak in the debate and to follow the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), who made a striking and powerful speech. I, like other Members, particularly enjoyed his last point.

I am pleased to be able to speak in opposition to the Government motion and in support of Lords amendments 5 and 23, and I welcome the cross-party support for those amendments in the other place and in the Chamber today. The other place has done democracy a great service by highlighting the link between this Bill and the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, because, contrary to the point made by the Leader of the House, the impact of these two pieces of legislation together would have been unfairly to reduce the representation of our great cities and urban areas.

A number of Government Members have talked about the simple principle of fairness, and the Leader of the House talked about the disparities in the system. There are disparities, but they are not the ones that he talked about. If I were selected by my party members again, the proposed boundaries would benefit me electorally. Nevertheless, they are unfair and undermine our democracy because of the enormous mismatch between population and registered voters.

[Kevin Brennan]

Is that not the heart of the argument, in that the Government’s original proposals were based on a principle of no representation without registration?

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend makes a very powerful point. Indeed, that is at the heart of my argument.

[Chris Ruane]

rose—

[Paul Blomfield]

I will give way to my hon. Friend, because he has done so much work on this issue and I have great respect for his views.

[Chris Ruane]

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind comments. Does he think that the fairest way to redraw the boundaries might be to use the census statistics, as they give a full and accurate figure of everybody who lives in the UK?

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend has clearly done so much work on the issue that he anticipates one of the points that I was going to make. He is absolutely right.

I want first to illustrate the mismatch by comparing my constituency, Sheffield Central, with the neighbouring constituency, Sheffield, Hallam. I am glad that I shall be walking through the same Lobby later as my political neighbour, but the two constituencies are of a very different nature and they illustrate my argument.

Sheffield Central is inner city and multicultural; we have large council estates, houses in multiple occupation, two universities and very high levels of voter turnover. Already, 17% of households have nobody on the register. Sheffield, Hallam consists of our city’s leafy suburbs; it is largely monocultural with large areas of comfortable owner-occupation, and a very stable population. Only 4% of its households have nobody on the register. There is a huge disparity between the number of people represented by the MPs for those two constituencies.

I have made that point before, but I now have the advantage of supporting it with the latest information available, which is from the 2011 census. If the argument was reduced to a simple question of constituency size based on the number of registered voters, our two constituencies would appear to be pretty similar in size. However, if we compare the population according to the 2011 census with the number of voters registered on 2 January 2013 according to the council’s electoral registration officer, we can see that the picture is completely different. Sheffield Central has 76,596 registered voters whereas Sheffield, Hallam has 71,559—the difference is just 5,037, or 7%. According to the census, Sheffield Central has a population of 115,284 whereas Sheffield, Hallam has a population of 89,356, and so the difference is 25,928, or 20%.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I, too, am a representative of an inner-city seat. Surely the hon. Gentleman recognises, as I do, that one of the main reasons behind such differences is the number of non-UK nationals in a particular constituency who often live in households containing no UK nationals and therefore no UK voters. I know that puts a huge additional burden on him as a Member of Parliament, as it does on me—all these people require representation—but they are not UK nationals and therefore should not be voting in UK general elections.

[Paul Blomfield]

There is a bit of a difference between the two inner-city seats that the hon. Gentleman and I represent. Although there is some evidence to endorse his point, it does not explain the enormous disparity between the two seats in Sheffield.

Many of those who are excluded from the electoral register are precisely the people who form a huge proportion of my casework and I know that the situation will be the same for many Members who represent inner-city seats. More importantly, the combination of legislation means that their voice in Parliament will be reduced. If the Electoral Commission’s original concerns about the impact of the Bill came into being and were compounded by a process of redrawing boundaries based on the register as at December 2015, the gap would widen even more. If boundaries were redrawn based on an average electorate of 76,641, which was the basis for the Electoral Commission’s calculations, the actual population of Sheffield Central would be approaching 50% more than that of Sheffield, Hallam.

Some might argue that the Electoral Commission’s worst fears might no longer come true, particularly in the light of some of the concessions the Government have been forced to make. In the longer term that might be true, but crucially the next boundary review would be conducted at the low point of the registration cycle in December 2015. Let me make it clear that like those on my Front Bench I support the principle of equalisation. In so far as there is public interest in constitutional reform, that argument has enormous resonance with the public, but the people to whom I have spoken were shocked to learn that equalisation is based not on population but on the number of registered electors. The effect of the combined legislation will be not to reduce but to enhance inequity.

[Dr Wollaston]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that that is simply not always the case? In Torbay, for example, those on one side of the road are represented by a Liberal Democrat colleague who represents 76,000 voters. On the other side of the road at the Brixham end of Torbay, which is in my constituency, there are just over 67,000 voters. One vote carries 11% more weight on the Brixham side of Torbay, and when we take the populations into account, the discrepancy is even higher. It does not always ring true that using population equalises matters because, in some cases, it would make things worse. It certainly would in my constituency, where the situation is already unfair.

[Paul Blomfield]

I do not think that Sheffield is any different from many of our other large urban centres, and I think that the effect I have described in relation to Sheffield would apply to the vast majority of urban areas in this country. There might be some exceptions in Devon.

To respond to an earlier comment, my view is that we should move towards a system of genuinely equal constituencies based on boundaries drawn by population size, not by registered voter numbers, but that is clearly a debate for another time. Whether or not we go down that route, we need now to pause, to ensure that individual electoral registration does not further enhance inequity and does not further disempower our cities. If we do not pause, we risk creating a US-style democracy, with notorious under-registration, that excludes the disadvantaged and the disengaged and that focuses political parties and elections on the needs of the more privileged and in that way poisons our politics.

[Chris Ruane]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way once again. He mentions the American system, where registration has gone down. That was a deliberate political act by the Republican party to organise voter suppression. Does he think that there is an element of deliberate political voter suppression from the Conservative party?

[Paul Blomfield]

I do think indeed that the Conservative party had a plan.

[Chris Ruane]

It wasn’t very cunning.

[Paul Blomfield]

Indeed; the plan was pretty transparent, and it seems to be falling apart under the scrutiny of another place and with the support of other parties across the House. I am delighted about that because accepting Lords amendments 5 and 23 will provide the pause that we need to ensure that our democracy is not weakened. That would give us the time to get this right, and I look forward to the House supporting those amendments.

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

I hope I can cheer up my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) and the whole House by quoting Edmund Burke, who told the electors of Bristol:

“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment”.

We cannot be on autopilot in the House; we must do what we think is right, in the interests of our constituents and the country, which is why I did not join my Government in voting against the measures on payday loans proposed by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), or Labour’s proposed extension to the national insurance contribution holiday to the south-east, and it is why I voted against my Government over the constitutional car crash that was the House of Lords Reform Bill.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Thursday 13th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Hugh Robertson]

It is absolutely our intention to tackle the issue by regulating gambling at the point of consumption. Proposals to that effect will be brought forward later this year.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

T3. I am sorry that the Minister responded to my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), the shadow Minister, by accusing him of whining for raising genuine concerns about school sport. Does he not accept that the cuts to the school sports partnership will seriously undermine the 14-to-25 strategy?

[Hugh Robertson]

Let me be clear about this. The point I am simply making is that hon. Members cannot criticise a policy if they do not have a policy, and the Opposition do not, at this moment, have a policy. [Interruption.] No, no; I think I heard the shadow Chancellor saying that there would be no restoration of funding and that the Opposition could not make wide-ranging funding commitments. If the Opposition do not have the money to restore the partnership, the better approach is to follow the advice very wisely offered by the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell), which is to ensure that we work together to deliver the improvements we all want to see in school sport and deliver a proper legacy from London 2012.

Sittings of the House

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Wednesday 11th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I recognise that for people watching from the Public Gallery and outside, this is clearly not the most important issue facing Parliament, but it is useful that we have found a short period to debate it. For those of us who can no longer describe ourselves as new MPs but are of the 2010 intake, it is the first opportunity to comment on our sitting hours.

I acknowledge, as have many Members, the thoughtful and helpful report presented by the Procedure Committee to provide a framework for this debate. I am surprised that the Chair of the Committee was surprised by the reaction of the press. We must recognise, sadly, that we have a press that all too often is willing to take every opportunity to undermine confidence in democratic politics.

The Chair of the Committee usefully made it clear in his opening remarks that this is not about the extent of the hours that we work but how we manage them to maximum effect. In that context, as a northern MP, I acknowledge the points that have been made by many Members. This is not, for me, about family-friendly hours—being away from home for four days a week is not an issue—but about how we can operate more effectively. An earlier start and end to Tuesdays would provide greater flexibility. It would not mean that we would not work late on a Tuesday but, as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) said, it would give us more control over how we plan our work. It would mean that we could organise meetings inside and outside Westminster, at times when other people could attend, with greater confidence and without always having to pull out of them at the last minute. It would give us the opportunity, just sometimes, to have a night off. I must say that it would occasionally be good to be able to get away on a Monday or Tuesday in time to stock up the larder before the supermarket shuts.

As the Procedure Committee acknowledged, the main argument in favour of the current Tuesday hours was made by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), in his role as Chair of the Liaison Committee, in relation to Select Committees. As a member of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, I place great importance on my participation in it and find it enormously rewarding, but it is not beyond the imagination to bring our sittings forward for a 9 am private start and a 9.30 am public start. The same applies to Public Bill Committees, where I understand that that already happens.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

The last time we did this, it created absolute chaos for Select Committees, not only as regards Members having to start at 9 o’clock but in trying to get witnesses here for that time. It did not work, and we will threaten our Select Committee procedures if we go back to that nonsense.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Blomfield]

I acknowledge the point that has been made, but contrary opinions have been expressed by others who were around in that period. Indeed, some Select Committees appear now to be—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Again, a large number of rather excitable private conversations are taking place. We owe Members the courtesy of a fair hearing.

[Paul Blomfield]

As has been pointed out, there are Select Committees that meet earlier and that seem to manage to arrange for witnesses to attend.

The argument for earlier Tuesday sittings, as well as standing on its own merits, provides the opportunity to move the debates on private Members’ Bills to Tuesday evenings. As a Back Bencher, I believe in the importance of our having the opportunity to drive change through the House. Although I acknowledge the other options that the Chair of the Procedure Committee shared with us, moving those debates to a Tuesday evening would give many of us a greater opportunity to attend.

[Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

When we first had sittings on Wednesday mornings, I was the Government Whip responsible for private Members’ Bills. I suggested then—this was before we had sittings in Westminster Hall—that we could move private Members’ Bills to Wednesday mornings. We opened up Westminster Hall to make that easier. The reason I made that suggestion was that if we debated private Members’ Bills during the normal sitting week, it would make it easier for the Government. Is that what my hon. Friend is proposing?

[Paul Blomfield]

Not for one moment.

As has been pointed out, there are options on how we deal with private Members’ Bills. It is unreasonable that at the moment, those of us who plan our diaries so that we have constituency time on Fridays have to choose between going to our constituencies and attending the House to support private Members’ Bills, whether of our own volition or because we have had representations from our constituents to be there. Over the past two years, I have done that on three occasions. Frustratingly, on each occasion the Bill was talked out. I fear that if we do not agree to change our Tuesday sittings, we will exclude one important way in which the Procedure Committee might address the issue, because the slot will not be available for private Members’ Bills. There are stronger arguments than that, but it is one dimension of the argument.