(5 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberFurther to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I too am grateful to the Leader of the House for announcing that additional piece of business on Monday. I share deeply the concerns of the right hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) on these issues. What is happening to the Queen’s Speech? What will now happen to the debates and votes that were supposed to happen? We were supposed to conclude the Queen’s Speech debate by Wednesday.
This is a huge discourtesy to the House. If the Leader of the House wanted a vote on this Government’s deal, he could have had it 20 minutes ago. That was the right time to do it. We deserve some sort of explanation as to why this is being brought back on Monday so quickly without any conversation or discussions across the usual channels and no discussions or debate with other parties in this House. He has to get back to his feet and explain a bit more about what he is intending and why he never took advantage of the opportunity to have a vote on this 20 minutes ago.
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Should the Leader of the House not have sought to make an emergency business statement, if that was what his intention was, so that we could do what the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) have just done and asked questions of the right hon. Gentleman about his intentions regarding what happens to the rest of the important business that we have before us?
(6 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberI wholeheartedly congratulate the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight), my partner in crimes against music. I see that the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) is present as well. I was wondering what song we might be able to cover to celebrate the Second Reading of the right hon. Gentleman’s Bill, and I thought that perhaps it would be the Beatles classic “Drive My Car”—“Baby, you can park my car”.
Surely it should be Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”, which contains the words “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot”.
(7 years ago)
Commons ChamberI am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for clarifying that. I just refer him to exactly what is in new clause 64:
“Ministers of the Crown shall only create UK-wide frameworks”.
The presumption is that Ministers of the Crown will create them.
It speaks about consent, but that leaves it to Ministers of the Crown to create the UK-wide frameworks. That is not acceptable.
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that Scottish Ministers and Welsh Ministers are also Ministers of the Crown?
(7 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberI say candidly to the hon. Gentleman: get on with it, for goodness’ sake. The Select Committees should be up and running before the summer recess. If the Conservatives cannot do that themselves, they should accept your offer to help them arrange it, Mr Speaker.
I shall call the hon. Gentleman my hon. Friend. The Labour party has already held elections for Select Committee places. If the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) thinks the Conservative party is going to have difficulties arranging its own membership, we could provide it with election observers and tellers.
I shall call the hon. Gentleman my hon. Friend, too. He makes a very good suggestion. How about we make use of the Office of the Speaker? We could send observers along to help facilitate the Conservative party’s arrangements; and then let us get on with it, for goodness’ sake. We are three days away from the summer recess. Let us get these things in place.