Business of the House

Paul Flynn Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I am always concerned when I hear about planning going wrong in the way I suspect it has done in my hon. Friend’s constituency. It may be most helpful to Ministers if he could produce a short summary of what has gone wrong and pass it to them. That will enable them to look at the regulations and see whether anything needs to be changed.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

The House was at its best yesterday, but also at its worst in another degrading spectacle of Prime Minister’s Question Time, which was an exchange of insults and non-responses. May we debate early-day motion 51, which seeks to reinvent the format for Question Time so that it retains the robust questioning but is carried out in an atmosphere of calm and mutual respect?

[That this House is appalled at the demeaning and deteriorating spectacle of Prime Minister’s Questions; notes the widely expressed public revulsion at this ill-mannered, pointless exchange of insults; and calls for its reinvention into a new format in which the Prime Minister can respond to questions in an atmosphere of calm, respect and dignity.]

[Chris Grayling]

One of the things that make this one of the great debating chambers of the world is that there are lively debates between the two sides. I would never condone insults across the House, but I think we would lose something in this Parliament if we did not have a vigorous and sometimes challenging debate of the kind that we see regularly.