Business of the House

Peter Bone Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right that this is an ongoing catastrophe. The conflict is now in its eighth year, and the UN estimates that more than 400,000 people have been killed and over half the population has been displaced. He is right to raise that, and he may well wish to take it up with Defence Ministers on Monday during oral questions. The UK can be very proud that we are the second largest bilateral donor to the humanitarian response in Syria. We have now committed more than £2.7 billion to the Syria crisis since 2012, which is our largest ever response to a single humanitarian crisis.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

On pages 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 of today’s Order Paper, there are more than 60 private Members’ Bills listed for Friday from 20 right hon. and hon. Members. The vast majority of those Bills will be objected to by a senior Whip on Friday. Can we have, for transparency’s sake, a statement tomorrow morning listing all the Bills that the senior Whip will object to on Friday, so that the House knows which ones to concentrate on?

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend will know that the Government have always maintained the view that private Members’ Bills serve a very important function. They are an invaluable opportunity for Members to promote legislation on the causes they support. The Government have been keen to support a number of private Members’ Bills—I will not go into them now—and there are some excellent ones coming forward. I can also tell him that the number of private Members’ Bills passed under the Government in the 2010 Parliament was 31, versus only 22 in the 2005 Parliament. This Government have a very good record of supporting and enabling Back-Bench business to get on to the statute book.