Business of the House (Private Members’ Bills)

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2017 Commons Chamber

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

I wish I could say it was a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). I am very fond of him, as he knows. He is a regular visitor at Perth races and we enjoy that. I say to him, in all candour, that he is everything that is wrong with the private Members’ Bill system as it is currently constituted. His filibustering—his attempt to destroy honest attempts by Members of Parliament to bring legislation forward—is the thing that our constituents hate most about sitting Fridays. I wish at some point that he would just stop.

[Philip Davies]

What the hon. Gentleman ought to reflect on is that the first Bill that appears on a Friday needs just 100 people to turn up to support it. He is guilty, like many other hon. Members, of complaining that a Bill did not get passed when he could not be bothered to turn up and support it. If he bothered to turn up, some of the Bills he claims are so important would get through. Perhaps he should tell that to his constituents.

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[Pete Wishart]

Yes, of course it is a matter of 100 Members turning up, but we have had 100 Members here and private Members’ Bills have been thwarted not by the hon. Gentleman, to be fair to him, but by the Government. There is something wrong and rotten in the way we deal with private Members’ Bills in this House. We waste our time coming down from Scotland to participate in these debates, only for him to drone on, sometimes for two hours, to ensure that they do not proceed.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

The Procedure Committee has produced dozens of reports over the years—at least two in the last couple of years—outlining sensible reforms to the private Members’ Bill system, many of which reflect the eminently sensible system in the Scottish Parliament, where a Bill that has cross-party support can continue to make progress. Should not that system be adopted here?

[Pete Wishart]

My hon. Friend is utterly right. The Procedure Committee has looked at the issue on several occasions—four that I can remember—and each time has made strong and sensible proposals, suggestions and recommendations on how we should address it.

The time is right, given that we have the two-year Session. Let us vow to resolve the outstanding issues in our private Members’ Bill system and ensure that we get something that is fit for purpose, something that ensures we have the respect of our constituents and something that enables us to work across the parties. I would love to work with the hon. Member for Shipley on horse-racing issues or on another interest that he and I share, but we cannot do that because he would probably filibuster a Bill so that I could not get it through. I am most surprised that he is a sponsor of the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). Perhaps that suggests a change in attitude and approach—a mellowing over the years. He might actually be constructively engaged in some of these issues. [Interruption.] I hear, “Don’t hold your breath,” from one of his colleagues and I will not do so.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

While the hon. Gentleman is making accusations about my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), it may help to point out that my hon. Friend spoke for over an hour on my private Member’s Bill and made some very constructive points, even though he opposed it. He did not just oppose it for opposition’s sake.

[Pete Wishart]

I am actually a great fan of the speeches by the hon. Member for Shipley. He has a unique talent for filibustering. I just wish he would not do it on private Members’ Bill days, when we are trying to get things through the House. He seems to be able to speak for hours and hours on these things. It is something that new Members of the House might have to look at to see how to do it.

We will support the amendments put forward by the hon. Member for Rhondda and the Labour Front Bench. We fundamentally and profoundly agree that we must have a routine for private Members’ Bills that respects the fact that this is a two-year Session of Parliament. To have 13 days for private Members’ Bills is clearly insufficient. I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Shipley that the Rolls-Royce solution is to have another ballot next year. That is something that the Government will not do, so what should we do in the face of the Government’s refusal to do that? Surely the sensible approach is to ensure sufficient time for the private Members’ Bills that we already have, which would possibly allow more to progress through this House than we would normally expect.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman said that it would be the Rolls-Royce solution to have a second ballot—my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) made a perfectly good point about that—but nobody has asked for that and it is not in the amendment.

[Pete Wishart]

How about the hon. Lady and I campaign to ensure that we get that in place? If she agrees with me—some of her hon. Friends look like they might also agree with her—let us do it, because that is surely the solution we need. Now, we will not get that—the Government have made it clear that it will not happen—so what we need is an arrangement for the existing private Members’ Bills that properly reflects the two-year Session.

We have a long affection for private Members’ Bills on these Benches. We had the first SNP private Member’s Bill last year, when Eilidh Whiteford, the former Member for Banff and Buchan, got her private Member’s Bill on the Istanbul convention through the House—it was probably opposed by some Conservative Members. Last year we had four private Members’ Bills in the top 10 —there were some fantastic ones proposed—but we were really pleased for our former colleague Eilidh Whiteford and proud that she managed to get hers through the House last year. We also have two this time round, and I look forward to the fantastic private Members’ Bills to be proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald)—they are no longer in their places. I look forward to hearing them support their Bills in the House.

We need certainty about private Members’ Bills, because while it is quite easy for some colleagues on the other side of the Chamber to get back and forth to the House of Commons on Fridays, it is not so easy for Members from Scotland. Getting down to the House of Commons to take part in these debates involves getting on a plane which takes probably in the region of four to seven hours. We therefore need certainty about when sitting Fridays will be, and we are grateful to the Leader of the House, who has listed the seven sittings we will secure over the next year.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I declare an interest as the person who came fifth in the private Members’ Bill ballot—the highest on this side of the House. By the hon. Gentleman’s logic, he is arguing for more sitting Fridays, when it would be even harder for people from Scotland to come down here, and nowhere in his argument does he acknowledge the fact that the most important stage of a Bill’s progress is Committee, which can go on for weeks and weeks and is not subject to any of the criticisms of what may happen on a Friday. Surely that is an important part of a Bill’s progress, yet he is making no proposals about that, and it is not being curtailed.

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[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because he makes a very good point about the Committee stage of private Members’ Bills—there is one that I particularly support and I hope to be a member of the Committee. What I am asking for is not to abandon these sitting days, but to have certainty about when they will be available. We are grateful that the first ones have been listed, but if we are to have further days for consideration of private Members’ Bills, as the Leader of the House seemed to suggest, surely it is only right, proper and appropriate that they are listed now, so that we get that certainty. We have to make a massive effort—maybe not the effort that the hon. Gentleman has to make—to get to this House readily and easily. It is not easy to get down here and back from Perthshire on a Friday. This is about ensuring certainty about the dates. The Leader of the House suggested that there might be further days; all we are asking is that we get them in place.

I will end by saying a little about private Members’ Bills and their importance to the House. Our constituents like private Members’ Bills. I can tell new Members that they will probably be lobbied on private Members’ Bills more than on any other pieces of legislation in their time as Members of Parliament. People like that private Members’ Bills are usually cross-party and consensual, and they like the way that private Members’ Bills are usually on issues that they feel are important to them, so let us make sure that we respect our constituents’ wishes. Given the vacuity of the Government’s legislative programme, it also has to be said that private Members’ Bills will probably be the most interesting and exciting Bills that we will consider in this Session, so let us make sure that we get the necessary time to consider them properly.

I will end with one plea. Of course we will support the amendments, but let us get the whole issue of private Members’ Bills properly resolved, so that we do not have my friend the hon. Member for Shipley continuing to talk them out.