Peter Bone
Main Page: Peter Bone (Independent - Wellingborough)Department Debates - View all Peter Bone's debates with the Department for Transport
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I speak as a representative of the Backbench Business Committee, and will briefly set the scene for this debate. As Members know, every Tuesday we hold an evidence session for Members of Parliament, who come to the Committee to try to secure a debate. They have to overcome many hurdles: the subject should not be Government business, or business that the Labour Opposition might want to discuss; and a number of Members must be interested in it. Judging by the numbers present this afternoon, that hurdle has probably been overcome. There must also be cross-party interest, and we like there to be internal dispute between the parties on the issue. The ideal debate, of course, is one that Members on neither Front Bench would want put on.
This debate on high-speed rail ticks almost all those boxes. We want this to be a wide-ranging debate. The Backbench Business Committee did not want it to be just about local constituency interests; we also wanted it to be about the principle of high-speed rail, and whether it is correct to spend billions of pounds on it. A Member who represents a constituency in the south-west might feel that it is not appropriate to do so, and that the money could be spent elsewhere. We hope that those points will be debated today.
We in the Backbench Business Committee are keen to stress that this Chamber is on a par with the main Chamber. Members taking part in Westminster Hall debates have absolute privilege, as they do in the main Chamber. The only difference is that we are not able to table a substantive motion in this Chamber. In the past, when a debate in this Chamber has produced a lot of interest and a lot of different points of view, we in the Backbench Business Committee have been keen to put on another debate on the same subject in the main Chamber, where there might be a substantive motion.
One of our problems in the Backbench Business Committee is that we are not in control of the allocation of time. In the main Chamber, we are given only limited notice by the business managers of when our time will be. Moreover, we do not know how many days we will get this Session. We have more certainty about Westminster Hall, which is why high-speed rail is being debated here today. That does not mean that we would not be prepared to consider, at a later stage, putting on this debate in the main Chamber.
Many Members want to speak, so I shall conclude my remarks. I have parliamentary business elsewhere, Mr Walker, so I apologise for the fact that I shall have to leave shortly.