Business of the House

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

With the leave of the House, I shall respond briefly to the excellent debate on the business motion.

I shall deal first with the important point made by the right hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot), which touched on the point of order from the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd). It is essential that we find a way of allowing the minority parties to play their part properly in the Select Committee system. It may be helpful to the House to indicate that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will not move motion 13 this evening, because we need to talk further about this.

Unfortunately, the proposition and the amendments that have been tabled are not helpful to the hon. Gentleman in securing what he wants. Indeed, the amendment to which he put his name would have prevented the minority parties from having a member on the Select Committees that he wanted. That shows that it is important that we discuss the matter further, and make sure that we get the right result.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

Has the hon. Gentleman any explanation whatsoever for how we got ourselves into such a mess?